


Future Trauma

by secooper87



Category: Doctor Who, Futurama
Genre: F/M, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-22
Updated: 2012-09-10
Packaged: 2017-11-12 16:50:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secooper87/pseuds/secooper87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the endangered animal Planet Express is delivering gets loose, and whole cities begin dying at once on the planet Doom, Leela, Fry, and Bender must rely on help from a strange man wearing a pinstripe suit, who might be -- horror of all horrors! -- a bigger thief and liar than Bender!  Oh no!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> If you have never seen Futurama, you should still be able to follow this story.
> 
> If you have never seen Doctor Who, you should still be able to follow this story.
> 
> (Thank you to Muadzin, Wonderbee31, and a special thank you to Jimmy Collins, who all helped me make this story funny! Special thanks for the Brick Joke!)

"Good news, everyone!" cried Professor Hubert Farnsworth as he paraded into the Planet Express conference room. "We've been hired to make a slightly illegal and morally questionable delivery to the Planet Doom in the Galaxy of Horrors."

"Been there, done that," snapped Bender, putting his legs up on the table.

"Galaxy of Horrors?" asked Fry. "That sounds scary."

"Oh, it's not so bad," said Amy Wong. "There's this great nail salon on the Planet Flaming Death, and the Planet Blood-Curdling Screams has some of the most amazing clothing boutiques you could imagine."

Fry shuddered. He thought the galaxy was sounding more and more horrifying by the minute.

"So, what's the delivery?" asked Leela. She leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest, and giving the Professor a pointed look with her single large eye.

The Professor stepped back, nearly stumbling over the green slippers he wore, and in one overdramatic gesture, he yanked a large white sheet off of a large wooden crate. "Behold!" he shouted.

The employees of the Planet Express Delivery Company beheld.

"So?" asked Leela.

The Professor looked back at Leela, suddenly disoriented. "Wha?"

"So what's in the crate?" Leela clarified.

Professor Farnsworth waved the question away. "Oh, I don't know. Some carnivorous endangered animal or something."

Bender suddenly perked up at the news. "Endangered animal you say?" he asked, the gears of his electronic robot-mind suddenly teaming with black-market possibilities and strategies.

"Professor!" protested Leela. "You can't just kidnap an endangered animal and then sell it off to the highest bidder! No matter how carnivorous it is."

"Leela, not all animals are cuddly and cute like Nibbler," said Fry. "Some animals have big pointy teeth and huge appetites. Like Nibbler."

"Nothing is wrong with Nibbler," Leela insisted.

Bender, in the meantime, was measuring the crate, trying to assess it for weak spots and ways of breaking in. Despite being made out of wood, the crate was surprisingly sturdy, and Bender was trying to decide whether he had time to nip out and steal a better crowbar.

"If this animal's dangerous, do you think it will get out maybe?" asked Zoidberg. "That crate doesn't look too strong. And look! Someone left some peanut butter on Amy's shoe!" He waddled over to Amy's shoe, and started sucking on it.

"Yech!" said Amy, as she kicked off her shoe.

"It's stronger than you think," said Professor Farnsworth. "It's made of a new synthetic kind of wood that's so strong and impenetrable, nobody understands how it works. In fact, the scientists suspected to have made it were burned at the stake for witchcraft."

"Wow," said Amy. "That's pretty intense."

"Oh, my, yes!" said Professor Farnsworth, licking his lips. "Best barbecue I've been to in years!"

"I didn't think we did illegal deliveries since that time we moonlighted as a taxi-service for the Robo-Hooker-Planet," said Leela.

"Normally we don't," Professor Farnsworth agreed, "but these clients offered me something I've been looking for my entire life!" He reached into his lab-coat pocket, and produced a slip of paper. "Behold! A jump-the-line card for the DMV!"

"Wow!" said everyone at Planet Express.

* * *

FUTURAMA

_The show that no longer endorses the poaching of endangered animals!_


	2. Chapter 2

Fry and Bender thudded the crate down in the Planet Express Ship, and turned to Leela. Leela, who had threaded her long purple hair through the back of her favorite blernsball cap, was standing beside Amy, who was there trying to look busy so that she could finish up her internship for Professor Farnsworth without having to do any actual work.

"All right," said Leela, with her normal efficient working tone-of-voice. She looked down at her clipboard, trying to look as if she were studying something intently, because she was afraid that her own facial expression would give away her real plan. Which probably would have worked better if the paper on the clipboard hadn't been the paper she'd used to brainstorm said plan. "Conditions being what they are, I think it would be best to guard the animal."

Fry groaned. "Aw, man!" he said. "Can't we just pretend we did that, and go watch TV instead?"

"No."

"What's the worst that could happen if it escaped?" complained Fry.

"It could rampage the ship and eat us all," said Leela. "Or Bender could make off with it first."

"What?" said Bender. "That's crazy talk! I'm not plannin' on stealin' nothin'!" He flipped the page of the book he was reading, the Idiot's Guide to Offloading Stolen Endangered Livestock.

Leela sighed. "Fine, then. _I'll_ guard the crate. You two can go ahead and do nothing, like you always do."

" _You'll_ guard the crate?" asked Amy, incredulous. "Alone? Are you kidding me?" She stared at the clipboard, pointedly.

"Why shouldn't she?" asked Fry.

"Knowin' Leela, she's plannin' something," said Bender, offhandedly.

"Release the animal back into the wild? Who said anything about releasing the animal back into the wild?" Leela protested. She then realized what Bender had actually said, and hugged her clipboard, giving a sheepish grin. "I mean, planning something? What do you mean, I'm planning something?"

"Oh, I get it! So Amy should guard the crate," said Fry.

"Actually, I'm not going," said Amy.

They all stared at her. "Why not?"

"Spleesh, I'm not stupid," said Amy, rolling her eyes. "All three of you are just dying to open that crate. It's only a matter of time before one of you succeeds, and you wind up with some crazy wild animal on the loose."

"What do you mean, all three of us?" asked Fry. "I don't wanna open the crate."

Amy sidled up to Fry, putting an arm seductively on his shoulder, and whispered in her best sexy voice, "Hey, Fry. Wanna open the crate?"

Fry shrugged. "Okay," he said, and started pulling at the boards. Of course, the boards didn't budge.

Amy stepped back, folding her arms. "See?"

Leela and Bender, meanwhile, were having a glare-off. Amy noticed the tension between the two of them, and sighed. "Why don't you put the crate onto the bridge of the ship, and then you can all three look after it together?"

Leela glanced at Amy, then went back to glaring at Bender. "Fine."

"And take Nibbler with you," said Amy, thrusting a cute, cuddly little 3-eyed sleeping animal out towards Leela. "Maybe when this dangerous wild animal does break loose, Nibbler will eat it for you."

Leela's expression softened as soon as she took the sleeping Nibbler from Amy. She gave Nibbler a friendly smile and scratched his belly. It didn't really matter to her that Nibbler was actually a highly intelligent member of a proud and ancient race, who was staying undercover as Leela's household pet to gather intelligence on Planet Earth. Leela still thought that Nibbler was absolutely adorable.

Maybe, if the creature in the crate was cute enough, she'd keep it as a pet, too.

"All right, you two," said Leela. "Move it into the bridge!"

Fry and Bender, of course, began complaining.

* * *

The journey was tense. It began tense, and it continued to be tense. You could have cut the tension with a standard Albonazantrazi Slicing Beetle, if Bender hadn't stolen the beetle in question three weeks ago.

Leela and Bender were constantly watching one another, making sure that neither of them opened the crate. Leela knew that if Bender opened the crate, he'd probably kill the cute, sweet, cuddly little animal inside and sell it off to the highest bidder. Bender knew that if Leela opened the crate, she'd swipe his cash-cow and let it off on some big nature preserve planet, where he'd never see it again.

Fry knew nothing, because he was Fry.

Well, that was not entirely true. Fry knew that he loved Leela. He knew that Bender was his buddy. He knew he was in the 31st century, because he'd been accidentally frozen delivering a pizza a thousand years ago. And he knew that he was on an intergalactic space ship in outer space.

He was a bit fuzzy on the rest of the details.

He was pretty sure that opening the crate was a bad idea (although he couldn't figure out why), and that both Bender and Leela wanted to open it (although he couldn't figure out why that either). He thought he remembered something about an animal being in the crate. The last time they'd delivered an animal had been when they delivered that monkey-wearing-a-hat. Fry had hated that monkey. This time, he'd come prepared. He was armed with a large number of bananas.

"Well," said Bender, stretching over-exaggeratedly, "I'm gonna go flirt with that new vending machine down the hall. I'll just bring this crate along with me."

Leela was in between Bender and the crate in a second. "The crate stays here," said Leela.

Bender sat back down in his chair, grumbling.

Fry felt his stomach matching Bender's sentiment. "Man, am I hungry."

"Me too," said Leela, in a pointed and aggressive way that meant that hunger was the last thing on her mind at the moment. "Bender, you're the cook. Go make dinner."

"But you just ate!" protested Bender.

"That was seven hours ago," said Leela.

"Yeah, well, I don't know why you squishy organic types need to eat so much," Bender grumbled. He got up, and took a crowbar out of his chest cavity. "Well, I'm off to the kitchens. Better bring that crate with me."

Leela crossed her arms, and held her ground.

Bender stared her down. "If it's not going, then I'm not going," said Bender, slapping the crowbar against his hand.

"I'm the pilot," said Leela. "It's my job to stay in here with the crate. It's your job to go to the kitchen and cook."

"Oh, yeah?" asked Bender. "Well, you can bite my shiny metal ass!" He turned to Fry. "Hey, Fry, buddy! I'll give you a beer if you distract Leela long enough for me to open up this crate."

Leela went over to Fry, batting her eyelash as she walked. "Hey, Fry," she said, seductively, "I'll kiss you if you get Bender out of the way so I can open this crate."

Fry was experiencing a condition he knew far too well, which he called 'brain overload'. He looked from Bender to Leela, examining what he knew. Year 3000. Outer Space. Buddy. Love. Okay, that wasn't helping him. And he still had this weird feeling that opening the crate was a bad idea.

"Must open box," said Fry, clutching at his head. "Can't open box. Box bad. Leela good. Bender friend. Beer very good. Kiss very good. Shouldn't open box. Monkey in box. Aaaaa!" He doubled up, cradling his head in his hands.

Leela and Bender looked at one another.

"I think we broke him," said Leela.

"Looks like," said Bender.

They both went back to their previous game of trying to get one another to leave the room.

Fry's outburst must have woken Nibbler, who suddenly perked up, examining his surroundings and making cute, high-pitch animal sounds. His eyes landed on the crate, and his jabbering suddenly stopped. His eyes widened a little. Carefully, almost cautiously, he crept out of his basket and went towards the crate. He put his ear up against it, and could hear the muffled noises coming from inside. He took a sniff, and then suddenly started back with alarm.

"Uh oh," said Nibbler.

Then he bolted.

Leela, Fry, and Bender noticed the sudden change in Nibbler, and recognized the fear and horror in the tiny Nibblonian's expression. They looked at one another, and then all ran after him.

"Wait, Nibbler, where are you going?" Leela cried.

They found Nibbler by the airlock, bringing out a concealed mini space-ship.

"Anywhere but here," said Nibbler.

"Why?" asked Leela. "Does it have something to do with what's in the crate?"

"Leela," said Nibbler, "I am a member of the most ancient race in the universe. Do you want to know _why_ we are the most ancient race in the universe? It's because we have always stuck by one philosophy: whenever _he_ gets involved in anything, we don't."

"Whenever who gets involved in anything?" asked Leela.

"The creature in your crate," said Nibbler, as if it was obvious.

"So that animal in the crate is sentient?" asked Leela. "It's intelligent?"

"He's definitely intelligent," said Nibbler. "Cunning, manipulative, and highly destructive. And he's definitely not an animal." He shuddered. "More like a weapon."

"Oooh," said Bender, tossing aside the Idiot's Guide to Offloading Stolen Endangered Livestock and taking a copy of the Idiot's Guide to Illegal Arms Sales from his chest-cavity instead. "Bet I can get top dollar for that!"

"You'll never catch him!" said Nibbler. "He is undefeatable, unstoppable, and… I… sort of… owe him fifteen dollars." He cleared his throat. "If you want my advice, ditch the crate and be thankful you escaped with your lives." And with that, Nibbler pushed the space ship into the airlock, and was gone.

Leela was now feeling a bit shaken. She was trying to figure out what, exactly, to do next. But she didn't have long to think about it, because the Planet Express Ship suddenly lurched violently to the right, slamming Bender, Fry, and Leela against the floor. Leela got up, brushing her purple hair out of her eye.

"What the…?" she said.

A rectangular image suddenly appeared in the air before her. It was not a welcome image. In fact, it was an image that made Leela feel physically ill.

"Why, if it isn't the always sensual and highly erotic Captain Leela," said the air hologram of Zapp Brannigan.

From behind Brannigan, his second-in-command, a small green alien named Kif Kroker, gave a weary sigh.

Leela felt more like punching something.

"What do you want, Zapp?"

"I come to engage you on behalf of the Earth Government," said Zapp. He waggled his eyebrows. "And on behalf of myself, I plan to engage you in something else later tonight."

Nope. Not punch something. Punch someone.

Leela held back her anger with a surprising amount of inner strength. Zapp was like this with everyone, but he had a special thing for harassing her ever since she accidentally slept with him that one time. "Kif," she said. "What's going on?"

"Earth Government has determined that you have been employed to deliver item 33971 to the Planet Doom in the Galaxy of Horrors," said Kif. "Item 33971 was declared an endangered animal, but has since been reclassified as a dangerous biological weapon."

Leela remembered what Nibbler had told her, and suddenly had a sinking feeling in her chest.

"Don't worry, Leela," said Fry, confidently. He held a banana as if it was a deadly weapon. "I'll protect you."

Leela closed her eye in exasperation.

"So you see, Leela, you've got a dangerous biological weapon on board your ship, and you're delivering it right into the hands of Earth's enemies," said Zapp. He made a hand-gesture to illustrate his point that seemed both utterly stupid and incredibly lewd at the same time. "Kerpow."

"What enemies?" asked Leela. "Earth's not at war with anyone."

"At the moment," qualified Zapp.

Kif gave a weary sigh.

Leela crossed her arms. "Okay, fine," she said. "We'll get rid of the crate. We'll drop it off at a toxic waste dump or something. You happy now?"

"Not good enough!" said Zapp. "On behalf of the Earth Government and the Democratic Order Of Planets, prepare to be boarded and ransacked." He raised his eyebrows, and added, in a lewd, inappropriate undertone, "Again and again and again."

The Planet Express Ship shook once more, throwing Leela and Fry to the floor. Leela heard the familiar clang of the docking equipment engaging with the Planet Express Airlock. She got back to her feet, her head spinning.

Behind her, the airlock opened, and a small group of armed Security Forces stormed into the Planet Express Ship, followed by Zapp Brannigan and Kif.

Zapp Brannigan gave Leela a look that could start at least five sexual harassment lawsuits in three different major star systems. Leela tried to ignore him.

"All right, all right, we'll hand over the crate. Fry, Bender, you two…" started Leela. She stopped, and looked around. "Wait, where's Bender?"

Fry looked around, too. Bender was nowhere to be found. "Maybe he's flirting with the vending machine?" Fry offered.

Leela didn't hear him. She was already running to the bridge. Behind her, the armed Earth-Security Forces, Kif, Zapp, and Fry all followed. Leela knew that the moment Bender opened that crate, all hell was going to break loose. And she had to stop him before that happened.

They arrived in the bridge to an absolutely horrific sight. Bender stood, crowbar still in hand, jolting around crazily and belting, "She'll be comin' round the mountain" at the top of his electronic voice box. Stuck to the top of his head was a refrigerator magnet.

Beside him was a busted-open — and clearly empty — crate.

Fry ran over and tore the magnet off of Bender's head. "Bender! Bender! Are you alright?"

"Eh, I guess," said Bender. He clanged on his head with his hand. "Circuits all seem okay. But if I ever find James Clerk Maxwell, I'm suing his ass."

Leela just stared at the shipboard computer. It looked like someone or something had messed around, tried to access it, but had been interrupted before he could do anything disruptive. There was a yellow post-it-note stuck on one of the levers, upon which was scrawled:

_Do not follow, or you will die._

Leela turned around, and crossed her arms. "Okay, Zapp. Time to come clean. What was in the crate?"

"Something that will blow your mind!" said Zapp, with a sultry nudge of his hips.

Leela waited for Zapp to clarify this, but he didn't. She sighed, and leaned back against the controls.

"You don't actually know, do you?" asked Leela.

"Not exactly," Zapp confessed. "But I know that, whatever it is, it makes God look like a space waxed bikini."

Leela decided to ignore this comment, partially because it was stupid, partially because she didn't understand it, but mostly because, coming from Zapp Brannigan, it was almost certainly lewd. She turned to Bender, instead.

"You saw it," said Leela. "What did it look like?"

"Let me check my internal memory." Bender's eyes flickered for a second, as he buzzed through the events of the last few minutes. His eyes snapped back into focus. "Nope," he said. "Nothing. Completely blanked out."

Kif poked at a data pad in his hands. "According to Wikipedia," he said, holding up the Wikipedia entry for 'Weapon, the', "the weapon defies physical description, but is cunning, devious, technologically beyond our understanding, and nearly indestructible." Kif paused, then squinted at the screen. "Also, someone called 'Nibbler' apparently owes the weapon fifteen dollars."

Leela sighed. "We'd better search the ship," she said. "We're still in space, so the weapon can't have gotten far."

"Unless it's some killer robot with guns for hands and big death lasers for eyes that breathes fire!" said Fry.

Leela shook her head. There was no use in explaining to Fry that the word 'biological' implied that this wasn't a robot. Or that fire couldn't technically exist in space — what with it needing oxygen. Or that there already _was_ a killer robot with guns for hands and big death lasers for eyes that breathed fire, commonly available on Earth as a children's toy. Fry wouldn't remember it, anyways.

"A hostile but financially prudent super-weapon running loose somewhere on board this ship?" said Zapp. He struck a pose that would have looked far more impressive coming from someone wearing pants. "Sounds like a job for Captain Zapp Brannigan."

Leela hit her head against the side of the empty crate. "Oh, Lord."

Zapp was by her side in a second, draping a hand across her shoulders. "I know that you're frightened, Leela," he said, "but never fear. I will protect you." He glanced over his shoulder at his men. "Set your guns to Maximum Kill."

"No!" Leela protested. She was still holding out hope that this would wind up being some cute, furry creature that she could hug. "I mean… look, if it's a weapon, wouldn't it be better for both Earth and the DOOP if we kept it alive?"

Zapp thought this over. Then he turned to his men. "Set your guns to Minimum Kill," he ordered, instead, flipping his own gun over to the correct setting.

"Sir, the guns are still lethal at either—" Kif started.

"And will the lovely Leela be accompanying us on our search?" asked Zapp, ogling Leela with his eyes.

Leela groaned, and thrust Zapp away from her.

"Don't worry, Leela," said Fry, gathering up a big bundle of bananas. "We'll find this talking monkey. And then we'll make it pay."

And as Leela and the others went off to look for this biological weapon, she resigned herself to the fact that she was surrounded, on all sides, by idiots.


	3. Chapter 3

Zapp edged around a corner of the ship, back to the wall. Then he jumped out into the open, gun in hand, pointed at… empty air.

"Just missed it!" said Zapp.

Leela sighed. Obviously, the weapon-creature-thing wasn't anywhere near here, anymore. And Zapp's feats of 'heroics' were having exactly no effect on her whatsoever. As usual.

Kif was examining a life-sign tracking device he'd gotten from the Nimbus, earlier. "We are picking up one unknown life-sign," he said. He pressed some buttons on the device. "I'll just see if I can work out where it's—"

Zapp grabbed the device out of Kif's hands. "Give me that!" He examined it, his brow furrowed in concentration. "It looks like it's headed to… somewhere. Very fast. And… what are those little… circley thingies?"

"That's the text," said Kif, with a weary sigh. "You read it."

"Reading is for wusses!" Zapp declared, dashing the equipment to the floor, its casing shattering and the interior workings flying across the corridor.

"You guys! You guys!" said Bender, as he came running into the corridor, hands in the air. "You'll never believe it!"

"You found the weapon?" Leela asked.

"No! I found my book," said Bender. He showed her his copy of the Idiot's Guide to Illegal Arms Sales, which now consisted of a front and back cover, and a lot of torn out pages in the middle.

"You realize what this means," said Zapp. "The weapon is trying to illegally sell itself!"

Kif gave a weary sigh.

"Or maybe it was upset that you were trying to sell it on the black market like it was some kind of not-cute, not-cuddly creature," said Leela to Bender.

"Yeah, well, if I ever get my hands on it, I'm gonna bend it like it's never been bent befo…" Bender trailed off, as Fry entered the corridor.

Fry didn't look up at them, however. He was fixated on a little drinky-bird toy in his hands, watching as it bobbed up and down, up and down.

"Fry, where have you been?" asked Leela. "You shouldn't wander around on the ship by yourself."

"Yeah," said Bender. "You might accidentally damage the black market value of my…" He looked at the others around him. "I mean, you might get hurt or something. Yeah, that's it."

Fry looked up at them, confused. "I was just looking for the talking monkey."

"Talking monkey!" Zapp shrieked. He jerked his head from side to side, waving his gun in sudden panic. "Where?"

Fry shrugged.

"Fry, for the last time, we're not looking for a talking monkey," said Leela. "We're looking for… something that we don't know what it looks like."

Which sounded far less stupid in her head than it had when she said it.

"Oh," said Fry. "Well, I didn't see any talking monkeys, anyways."

"Where'd you get the bird, Fry?" asked Bender. "And why are you paying it more attention than me, Bender?"

Fry ignored him, staring in fascination at the bird. Bender ran up to Fry, waving his arms and darting around and trying to get back his attention. But Fry was too intent on that bird.

"Gimme that!" said Bender, as he reached out to snatch the bird away from Fry.

Fry jumped back, yanking the toy up and out of Bender's reach.

"Hey, stop it!" said Fry. "That's mine!"

Bender mocked Fry's words in a whiny, high-pitched tone of voice.

"I never thought I'd say this, but Bender's right," said Leela. "Where _did_ you get that bird?"

Fry shrugged. "English guy."

Everyone looked at everyone else.

"What English guy?" asked Leela.

"The one I met," said Fry. "A few minutes ago."

"Fry," said Leela. "There are no British people on board this ship or the Nimbus. English or otherwise."

Fry scratched his head. "There aren't?"

Everyone there shook their heads.

"I'm Welsh!" one of the soldiers offered.

"You're nothing!" Zapp shouted at him.

"Oh," said Fry to Leela. He frowned. "So… who did I speak to?"

"The weapon," said Kif, with a sigh.

"The weapon's English?" said Bender. "Crikey, blimey, pucker me shiny metal bum!"

Everyone looked at Bender for a moment, then shrugged and ignored him.

"Fry," said Leela, "what was the weapon doing when you found it?"

"I dunno," said Fry. "He just said that if we knew what was best for us, we should leave. Or we'd die. Then he gave me this bird."

"If we know what's best for us!" Zapp cried. "Ha! A simple intimidation tactic. I say, Zapp Brannigan never knows what's best for anyone!"

Kif gave a weary sigh.

"Fry, think very, very hard," said Leela. "Where, exactly, did you see this 'English guy'?"

Fry scratched his head. "I think it was on a space ship." He considered. "Yeah, it was definitely on a space ship."

"We're on a space ship now, meatbag," said Bender.

Fry looked around. "No, this wasn't it. It was another one."

Leela looked over at Kif. "The Nimbus!" they both shouted at once.

They turned and raced off towards the docking point between the two ships, but, all of a sudden, the Planet Express ship shook, violently. Leela raced over to the windows, and found that the Nimbus was pulling away from their ship, undocking, and heading off into space.

The others all joined Leela, gawping at the departing Nimbus.

"Kif," said Zapp. "Contact the crew on board the Nimbus. Tell them to apprehend this weapon at once."

Kif sighed. "There is no crew on board that ship. You made me order them to leave."

"Then contact the cafeteria crew!" said Zapp.

"We _are_ the cafeteria crew," said one of the 'soldiers'.

The 'soldiers' all raised up their 'weapons' — which consisted of assorted ladles, spoons, forks, and knives.

Zapp thought a moment. "Oh, yeah, that's right," he remembered. "My normal crew died three weeks ago, in that invasion of radioactive space weasels."

"Cool," said Fry, his nose pressed against the window. "A talking monkey that steals space ships."

"Aw, man!" said Bender, crossing his arms. "Here I am, talking about hawking illegal merchandise, and the illegal merchandise goes off and hawks a space ship!"

Fry patted Bender on the arm. "Don't worry, Bender," he said. "This doesn't make you any less evil in my eyes."

"Yeah, well, stealing a space ship is nothing," insisted Bender. "You think that's impressive? I've stolen whole star systems before!"

Leela ignored the others, and raced into the main flight deck of Planet Express. She thudded into the captain's seat, and started dialing up settings on the ship's computer.

"I think I can track where it's going!" said Leela. She pulled a lever, and the Planet Express ship surged into life.

"Stand aside!" said Zapp, as he sidled over to Leela. "This is no job for a woman. This is a job for Zapp—"

Leela swerved the ship hard to the right, so that Zapp was knocked away from her, crashing against the far side of the ship.

"Do you have any idea where it could be heading?" asked Kif.

Leela tapped a few more things on the Planet Express computer. "Planet Doom," she said.

"You mean we could have just stayed at home and watched TV, and the package would have delivered itself?" asked Fry, slumping into a nearby chair. "We work way too hard!"

* * *

As they approached the Nimbus, which was now orbiting the Planet Doom, Leela maneuvered the Planet Express ship so that it docked with the Nimbus. They searched the Nimbus, but it was soon clear that whatever or whoever had hijacked the ship had left.

No life signs onboard the Nimbus, and the ship was down one escape pod.

"I'll blast that escape pod clear into next year!" shouted Zapp.

"Why don't you just leave it?" said Leela. "Maybe it's happier out in the wild."

"Or maybe it would be happier in little tiny pieces!" said Zapp, as he pressed a button on the control panel of the flight deck.

The panel blinked, gave an annoyed beep, and suddenly, all the computer monitors around them went black.

Writing lit up the monitors.

Zapp jumped as he saw the writing. "It's those circley thingies again!" he shouted.

Leela squinted.

"What… what does it say?" asked Fry, nervously.

"It says, 'leave at once, or you'll all be in terrible danger,'" Leela read.

"Another intimidation tactic!" said Zapp. "Kif, tell this weapon that, when Zapp Brannigan is your captain, you're always in terrible danger."

"We can't tell the weapon anything," said Kif, with a weary sigh. "This is just a message."

"I'll show you a message!" said Zapp, pressing the 'fire' button again on the control panel.

As before, the button did absolutely nothing.

"Well, good luck with that," said Leela. "Our work is done. We'll be going home, now."

She, Fry, and Bender all turned around and started heading back to the Planet Express Ship.

"Stop!" Zapp Brannigan commanded, waving his gun at them. "Under article... something of the Earth… something… I hereby place you under arrest for piracy and the illegal sale of dangerous weapons to Earth's enemies." He turned to the crew. "Arrest them."

The crew grumbled, but took out their kitchen implements and did their best to follow orders.

"We didn't do anything," Leela protested, as she was handcuffed with an industrial masher and an egg whisk. "This whatever-thing stole your spaceship, not us!"

"Yeah, we didn't even get any money for it!" said Bender, as his hands were secured with an oversized carrot peeler.

"The sentence for the sale of illegal firearms to the enemy during a time of war is death," said Zapp.

"We're not at war!" Leela shouted.

"We could be," said Zapp. "Now that you've just sold weapons to someone we might have been able to invade."

"We're going to die, aren't we?" asked Fry, his own hands secured with a garlic peeler.

Zapp sidled up to Leela. "There are always ways we could negotiate," he suggested.

"He means you could sleep with him!" Bender shouted at her.

"The weapon's the one that stole your ship and ran away!" said Leela. "Sleep with _it_!"

Zapp Brannigan thought this over. "Kif," said Zapp Brannigan, "apprehend this weapon and sleep with it. At once."

Kif's green face went pale.

"In the meantime," said Zapp, sidling up to Leela, again, "I will be getting better acquainted with this erotic spaceship captain."

Leela looked away in disgust.

"Wait, wait, what if we got the weapon back?" Fry proposed.

"Yeah!" Leela agreed. "Fry's the only one who's seen what it looks like. We could go down, get it back, and give it to you. Then no one would have to sleep with anyone!"

"Unless they really, really liked them," Fry said, hopefully, his eyes fixed on Leela.

"A likely story…" said Zapp.

"Sir, if these three are willing to do something as suicidally dangerous as recapturing that weapon, it'd mean we wouldn't have to," Kif pointed out. "And it would also give you a few hours to admire the sound of your own voice."

Zapp considered. "Very well," he decided. "Uncuff them."

The crew grumbled, but did as they were told.

"Aw, does this mean we actually have to do stuff?" Bender complained.

"Think, Bender!" said Fry. "There could be all kinds of things you could steal on the Planet Doom! And robot hookers! And casinos!"

Bender thought about it. "Hey, yeah," he said. "All right, count me in!"

"Planet Doom, here we come!" said Leela.


	4. Chapter 4

"All right, Fry," said Leela, as she steered the Planet Express ship towards the surface of the Planet Doom. "I want you to think very, very hard. What did this weapon look like?"

Fry hated it when Leela told him to think hard. Thinking hard hurt. He thought back to what had happened back when he'd met… it was a guy, wasn't it? Fry was pretty sure it wasn't a monkey-wearing-a-hat. But all Fry could really remember was that the guy was English, and had been talking a lot, and then Fry had asked if he could have the little bird thing, and the guy had given it to him, and…

Well, the bird thing had basically trumped everything else.

"Brown," Fry decided.

"Okay, great!" said Bender. "We go in, steal us some 'brown', find some sexy robot wenches to seduce, pick up some cool stuff, then skedaddle on out of there!"

Leela hit her hand against her forehead.

" _What_ was brown?" she asked. "Skin? Hair? Eyes?"

Fry frowned. "I don't know!" he said. "These are hard questions, and my thinking-thing hurts." He sagged.

"Would you at least be able to recognize it if you saw it again?" Leela asked.

"I guess," said Fry. "And if I don't, I could always offer him…" He blinked, and then realized. "Hey, wait a minute. He stole all of my bananas!"

"That's nothing!" Bender snapped. " _I_ stole Fry's kidney last week!"

"That good for nothing, banana-stealing… something," said Fry, pushing up the sleeves of his red jacket, as if getting ready to fight. "When I see him…"

"You're going to bring him back here, so we can go back to Earth without being labeled as traitors," said Leela. "Or… my having to sleep with Zapp."

"Again!" said Bender.

Leela's cheeks burned.

"You know what?" said Fry. "I bet he did something. That bird must have been some kind of magic mind-erasing bird, and when I touched it, it made me—"

"Or maybe you're just an idiot!" said Bender. He gave a Bender-chuckle, and put his feet-cups up on the ship's dashboard.

The Planet Express ship swooped down through the atmosphere of the planet, and landed, with a soft thud, against the dirt.

Leela and Fry ran down the steps of the Planet Express ship, then halted as they got to the bottom. Fry and Leela's jaws dropped, horror washing across their faces as they took in the destruction before them.

Around them lay a completely destroyed city, the brown, newly abandoned buildings crumbling to rubble, dead bodies lining the streets. The bodies looked as if they'd only just been killed, the rubble was still crumbling around them, and the city still hummed with power from generators nearby.

A short time ago, there had been millions of people living in this city. Now, the only sound was that of the wind running through Fry and Leela's hair, and the only people who remained were the corpses nearby.

"Ooh!" said Bender, coming up behind them and noticing the dead bodies. "Dibs on their stuff!"

Leela's wrist computer beeped, and she hit a button, examining it.

"What… what's it say?" asked Fry, trying to sound brave and macho, but it was like a moth pretending to be brave and macho in the middle of a high-fission explosion.

"'Leave while you're still alive'," Leela read.

* * *

Leela, Fry, and Bender walked through the ruined city, taking in their surroundings. Leela's mind couldn't quite wrap around the idea that everyone — _everyone_ was dead. She kept looking for signs of life, but so far, they'd found no survivors.

Was this what the weapon she'd brought had done? Had she just doomed the Planet Doom? What _was_ this thing she'd delivered? Fry had said it was English and 'brown' — whatever that meant. Nibbler had said it was sentient — cunning, manipulative, and highly destructive. Kif said it defied description. Wikipedia said that Nibbler owed it fifteen dollars.

How could a humanoid creature like that be able to do something like this?

"Leela," said Fry. "I'm scared."

"Don't worry, Fry," said Leela. "Everything's going to be just—" She gave a cry, as the ground cracked beneath her, and she fell down into the sewer with a small splash.

Bender and Fry looked down at her. Fry looked panicked.

"Leela? Leela!" he cried.

Leela tried not to think of how completely and utterly gross this was, as she emerged from the sewer water.

"I'm okay!" she shouted up to them.

"Bender, you're a robot! Go down there and get her!" said Fry.

"What do you think I am, a ladder?" asked Bender. "You get her yourself, meatbag. I'm going to go find some better stuff to steal." He gave a wave, and started walking off. "So long, chumps!"

Fry looked over at the departing Bender, then back down at Leela. "Don't move!" he said. "I'll be right back."

Then Fry's face disappeared from view.

Leela sighed. She wasn't sure she'd ever see them again. Or, actually, she probably would, because she usually wound up having to save their skins. Fry could be phenomenally stupid, sometimes. Still, there wasn't all that much trouble he could get into, in a completely dead city like this one. There weren't even any sewer mutants!

Leela got to her feet, and climbed onto the ledge at the side of the sewer. Then she froze. She thought… she could hear something. Or was that… someone? It sounded like an echoing shout, reverberating through the sewers.

Leela stepped forwards, tentatively. "Hello?" she called.

The shouting seemed to increase, although the words were still garbled, and she couldn't understand them.

"Are you alright?" she called, again, advancing forwards. "My name is Leela. I—"

She was cut off, dramatically, as she was grabbed from behind and pulled into an adjacent sewer tunnel, a hand over her mouth.

"Shhhh," someone whispered into her ear.

Leela struggled, but the hands didn't give. She was about to bite down on the hand around her mouth, when the shouting voices came in clearer, their metallic edge sounding far more grating and angry at close range.

"SEEK! LOCATE! EXTERMINATE!" the voices shouted. "SEEK! LOCATE! EXTERMINATE!"

The metallic pepper-pot shaped objects that drifted by were not, exactly, what Leela had been expecting. They were sort of brown, but they didn't sound English, and… well, there was more than one of them, which wasn't at all right. Maybe she'd been carrying one, in the crate, and it had come here to join its friends?

One of the metallic objects stopped, right next to the sewer tunnel where she was being held captive.

"SCANS DETECT UNIDENTIFIED LIFE FORMS IN THE VICINITY." It swirled around, its eyestalk glinting blue in the darkness.

Leela felt the hands release her, all at once, and a cool hand grabbed hers.

"Run!" shouted an English-sounding voice, as Leela was yanked off her feet and down the sewer tunnel.

"ALERT! ALERT! IT IS THE DOCTOR!" shouted the metallic voice.

"IT IS THE DOCTOR!" shouted the others. "IT IS THE DOCTOR!"

Leela struggled to regain her footing on the ground, as she was pulled around a corner.

"Humans!" the English voice said. "Tell them to leave, and what do they do? Waltz on in!"

"I… I don't…"

"I mean, honestly," the English voice continued, as Leela was yanked down another tunnel. "What part of 'leave while you're still alive' didn't you understand?"

Leela felt her breath catch in her throat, as her single eye adjusted to the dark, and she could make out a brown pinstripe suit dragging her along behind him. Brown. And English.

And there was only one of him.

"Course, can't blame you for being curious," said the man. "But blimey, you do pick your moments, don't you? Wherever trouble's afoot, you can bet the human race will be there, blogging or eyephoning or whatever it is you lot do these days."

Leela managed to skid to a stop, digging her black boots into the concrete of the sewer tunnel. The man (weapon? Whatever) turned.

"What—?" he started.

Leela gave a flying kick, and knocked him unconscious. Okay, great. So she had the weapon. Now she just needed to get Fry and Bender, and they could be on their way home.

Leela hoisted the guy up onto her shoulder, but froze, when she heard the metallic voice screech:

"DO NOT MOVE! DO NOT MOVE! YOU ARE A PRISONER OF THE DALEKS!"

She turned, and noticed the pepper-pot objects circling her.

"Look, I'm sorry about your city being completely destroyed and everything," said Leela. "We just had a teensy weensy problem with a misplaced package. But it's been fixed, now. So, if you don't mind, we'll just be on our way."

"YOU WILL OBEY!" shouted the metallic voices. "OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED."

For the first time, Leela noticed the twitching gun barrels sticking out from the metallic pepper-pot shaped objects. Leela put her hands in the air, suddenly realizing that she might be in slightly more danger than she'd thought.

"Now, there's been a little misunderstanding," she said. "We weren't the ones who did this. It was just this weapon we accidentally…"

One of the pepper-pot things drifted up to her, a sink plunger extending towards her as it moved.

"TEMPORAL SIGNATURE DOES NOT MATCH REQUIREMENTS," the pepper-pot announced, its plunger retracting. "YOU WILL COME WITH US."

"Huh?" asked Leela. "Look, if you're trying to sue us, I have to warn you that we don't actually have any money, and our building is worth pretty much—"

"YOU WILL COME WITH US!" the pepper-pots shouted at her. "OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"

"Better do what they say," said the English guy draped across her shoulder. "They're not messing around. When they say they'll exterminate you, they mean it."

Leela actually dropped the guy onto the ground, she was so startled. The guy groaned, and got back to his feet. He rubbed his head.

"Blimey, you can kick," he said.

The metallic pepper-pot things surrounding them seemed to shudder back the moment the man got to his feet.

"YOU ARE THE DOCTOR!" one of them shouted. "YOU ARE A PRISONER OF—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said the Doctor. "I know the drill. Although, technically, I already was a prisoner of the Daleks before you decided to ship me via air mail. Which was terribly uncomfortable and highly degrading." He glared at them. "Now. How'd you survive the war?"

"WE SURVIVED WITHIN THE GENESIS ARC," the Dalek said. "WE ESCAPED YOUR SLAUGHTER."

"Emergency temporal shift," sighed the Doctor, running a hand through his hair. "Only you lot went forwards in time, not backwards. And you found me."

"THE DOCTOR WILL OBEY!" shouted the Dalek. "OR THE HUMANOID FEMALE WILL BE EXTERMINATED."

"Oh, I'll obey, will I?" The Doctor flicked his eyes over to Leela. "Wait a tic. Are you one of the lot who shipped me over here?"

"Um… maybe?" said Leela.

"SILENCE!" shouted the Dalek. "THE DOCTOR WILL FOLLOW!"

"Just, just, before I do," said the Doctor, raising up a small metal tube, "just… little experiment. See, it's said that there's a rather large carnivorous creature living in these sewers, and I'm guessing that if I do this…" He flicked a switch, and the sewer water suddenly morphed together, surging into life and rushing towards the Daleks.

"EXTERMINATE!" the Daleks cried.

The Doctor grabbed Leela by the hand, and, for the second time that day, Leela felt herself yanked off her feet as she and the Doctor raced away from the metal pepper-pots.

* * *

When they emerged onto the surface, Leela was a little out of breath. She stared at this… Doctor whatever who'd been in that crate. He wasn't a small, furry animal, but he was kind of cute.

"Right, then!" said the Doctor. "Time for introductions. I'm the Doctor. They're the Daleks. They've single-handedly destroyed this city, and if you and your friends value your lives, you should leave right now."

"Not so fast," said Leela. "I don't know anything about these Daleks, but I know that you were the one in that crate. That makes you a dangerous biological weapon."

The Doctor blinked. "Sorry, that makes me what?"

"According to…" Leela sighed, as she realized that her authority on the subject was a jerk and an idiot. "…Zapp Brannigan, you're a deadly super-weapon." She paused. "And Nibbler agrees," she added, trying to give her protest some authority.

"Nibbler?"

"My pet… I mean, the ambassador to Earth," said Leela. "From the planet—"

"Oh, you mean…" the Doctor made a sound that was half way between a whistle and a screech. He gave a half shrug. "Least, that's what I call him. Name the size of a phone book, that one."

"Yeah, well, Nibbler told me that you were cunning, manipulative, and highly destructive," said Leela. "And he's cuter than you." She paused. "Possibly."

The Doctor ran a hand through his hair. "Well, course he would. He and I… aren't terribly good friends. What with his entire race leaving us high and dry during the Time War." He muttered something under his breath that sounded like "Arcadia", but Leela wasn't sure what that meant.

Leela crossed her arms. "Okay, hot shot. Answer me this. If you're not a weapon, then why were you in that crate?"

"Bit of bad luck," said the Doctor. "Got kidnapped by a group of robot thugs shortly after arriving in this century. Which was normal enough, until they locked me in a temporal isolation field — which is technology humanity shouldn't have for centuries yet. Course, field like that only worked while the crate was closed. Moment your bending robot opened the crate, I got free. Stuck a magnet on its head, blanked out its internal memory, stole the Nimbus, tried to convince you lot to leave, and here we all are."

"So you're saying you're _not_ a dangerous biological weapon _or_ an endangered species?" asked Leela.

"Ah," said the Doctor. "Not… endangered, exactly. More… extinct. Last one left, see."

Leela's eye widened. "Oh."

The Doctor gave her a manic smile that didn't reach his eyes. "But, yes! Any rate. Better get you three off this planet soon as possible, and if you know what's good for you — and that isn't a threat — you will never, ever come close to this galaxy again."

"Wait a minute," said Leela. "You can't just threaten me and then say, 'that isn't a threat'!"

"I'm not threatening you at all!" the Doctor insisted. "I'm warning you. The Daleks are the ones threatening you."

"No, they're threatening _you_ ," said Leela. " _You're_ the enemy of the Daleks. Fry, Bender and I have nothing to do with it."

"You have _everything_ to do with it!" said the Doctor.

Leela gave him a dubious look.

"Look, the Daleks want me," said the Doctor. "That much is clear. But if they wanted me so much, why ship me here using you lot? Why not just pick me up themselves, the way they did with my TARDIS?"

"They support struggling independent delivery companies?" Leela offered.

The Doctor shook his head. "It's not me they're really after," he said. "It's you three. I don't know what they want from you, but whatever it is, it's not good." He paused. "Sorry, just realized. I never got your name."

"It's Leela," said Leela.

The Doctor gaped at her. "What, is it really?"

"Yes!" Leela insisted.

The Doctor beamed. "Oh, that's brilliant, it is!"

Leela had no idea why her name was so incredibly brilliant to this guy. But, at the very least, he didn't seem to be a total moron like the other members of her party.

"Okay, fine," said Leela. "I'll go get Fry and Bender, we can go back to the Planet Express Ship and leave, and then we'll take you to the Nimbus so you can explain to Zapp Brannigan yourself why I'm not a traitor."

The Doctor, however, wasn't paying her any attention. He was fishing around in his pocket, muttering to himself under his breath, too softly for Leela to pick up. She leaned in a little closer, and thought she could make out the words, "temporal signature."

"What?" Leela asked.

"Temporal signature," the Doctor repeated, a little louder. "That's what the Daleks said they wanted you for." He brought the small, thin metal tube from earlier out of his pocket, and pointed it at Leela.

Leela kicked it out of his hand with a, "Hi-ya!"

"Oi!" said the Doctor, retrieving it from the ground. "That's my screwdriver."

"Nice try," said Leela. "I saw what that thing did in the sewer. I'm not letting you summon any more sewer mutants. Not even if my parents happen to be ones."

"Sonic trick," the Doctor told her, looking at the screwdriver, carefully. "It wasn't real. Just an illusion. Distraction." He took a pair of black rimmed glasses out of his pocket, and perched them on his nose, squinting at the screwdriver. "As I thought. The temporal radiation around you isn't nearly strong enough to do anything useful." He tucked the screwdriver into his pocket, then ruffled his hair. "So what do they want you for? And what do they want your friends for?"

Leela didn't answer, partly because she was trying to give off an air of authority and captainness, but mostly because the Doctor looked really, really cute with his hair all ruffled and those sexy black glasses on his face. Damn it, why did he have to be so adorable-looking?

The Doctor then gave Leela a radiant beam, which just made the cuteness thing that much worse.

"Better find out!" he said, with a wink.


	5. Chapter 5

Bender should have been having the time of his life.

He'd found this great jewelry store, and had started smashing in glass cabinets and taking all the jewelry. But he couldn't help thinking of that annoying creature in the crate that had made him seem like someone not great and not super-awesome.

"Thinks it's so great," Bender muttered, smashing another display case, "stealing a spaceship. Stealing Fry's bananas. I'll show them great! No one's better at stealing than me. Bender!"

"ALERT!" came a metallic voice from outside. "TEMPORALLY UNSTABLE ANOMALY LOCATED!"

Bender turned around. "Hey, who're you callin' an anomaly?" asked Bender. "I'm Bender. The best and most important person in the entire universe."

"INCORRECT," said the metallic pepper-pot shaped object drifting into the door. "WE ARE THE DALEKS. WE ARE THE SUPREME BEINGS."

"Yeah?" said Bender. "How big a girder c'you bend, shorty?" He gave a chuckle, and went back to stealing stuff.

"CONTAIN THE ANOMALY!" the pepper-pot demanded.

Bender suddenly felt himself trapped, as an array of red lasers encircled him. He tried to charge through them, but found himself repelled by an amazing force. He bounced from one side of the cage to the other, over and over again, eventually landing on the floor with a loud clunk.

"You're looking at a lawsuit, buddy," said Bender.

"THE ANOMALY WILL BE TAKEN FOR COMPLETE DISASSEMBLY AND SENTIENCE EXTRACTION," the pepper-pot demanded.

"Woah, woah, woah!" said Bender, getting to his feet. "You're not disassembling anything!"

He took a crowbar out of his chest cavity, and hit it against his hand in a menacing fashion.

One blast from the gun barrel of the pepper-pot, and the crowbar disintegrated in his hands.

"That was my best crowbar, you jerks!" said Bender.

"PREPARE SPECIAL WEAPONS DALEK!" shouted one of the pepper-pots.

Another pepper-pot came forwards, this one sporting a slowly unfolding array of metal-cutting tools, along with drills and sharp knives.

"All right, all right!" said Bender. "Let's negotiate!"

"DALEKS DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH INFERIOR SPECIES!" shouted the Dalek coming towards him.

"Who're you calling inferior?" snapped Bender. "I'm Bender!"

"INCORRECT," said the Dalek. "YOU ARE METAL AND SPARE PARTS."

And the Dalek advanced towards him, the many evil-looking attachments whirring and spinning with deadly intent.

Bender tried to back up, but he was trapped inside the red lasers. Not sure what else to do, Bender opened up the metal hatch to his chest.

"I'll give you money," said Bender, pulling things out and throwing them at the pepper-pots. They bounced off the red lasers. "You can have it. All of it! Just don't take my arms and legs. I need them to do the Mexican Hat Dance!"

"THE TEMPORAL ANOMALY WILL BE DISASSEMBLED," said the Dalek.

A high-pitched ringing sound vibrated through the air as Bender hurled the last diamond, and it suddenly ripped through the red laser cage, plopping neatly into the hand of the brown pinstripe-suited figure standing in the doorway. Who was also waving a metal tube in the air.

(Which, Bender now remembered, was the same pinstripe suited I'm-such-a-better-thief-than-Bender-I-can-steal-Fry's-bananas guy that Bender had broken out of that crate back on the Planet Express ship.)

"That's not going to do it," said the pinstripe suited definitely-not-better-than-Bender guy. "Daleks. Not big on diamonds. Although, have to say, quite interested in you."

"ALERT!" shouted the — Daleks, Bender guessed they were called. (Not that that made them any better than him. These Daleks couldn't even bend _one_ girder. That's how un-awesome they were.) "IT IS THE DOCTOR! IT IS THE DOCTOR!"

"Do they say that every time you show up?" asked Leela.

"I think they believe it's my theme music," the Doctor told her. He strode over to the Daleks, nonchalantly (thinks he's so hot. Bet he couldn't bend a girder, either). "Well, then. Daleks hunting robots. This is just like the Movellans all over again. Feeling a wee bit nostalgic, are we?"

"YOU ARE THE DOCTOR!" said one of the Daleks. "YOU ARE A PRISONER OF THE DALEKS. YOU WILL COME WITH US."

"Only you said 'anomaly'," said the Doctor, ignoring them. "A temporal anomaly. What use is that to you? What are you up to?"

"YOU WILL COME WITH US!" shouted the Daleks to the Doctor. "OR THE HUMANOID FEMALE WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"

Bender noticed a problem. A very big problem. Since the Doctor had entered, everyone was paying attention to the Doctor, and no one was paying attention to him. Bender.

"Hey, you can't take that guy!" said Bender to the Daleks. "I was going to hawk him on the black market!"

The Daleks swiveled around towards Bender. And Bender remembered that he might not _want_ them to pay attention to him.

The Doctor raised his hands up, still holding the metal tube and the diamond, and backing towards Bender. "Ah, ah, I wouldn't do that," he said. He glanced at the red lasers. "Anti-neutrino field isolators. Terribly clever but structurally unstable. For instance, if I do this…"

The Doctor buzzed the metal tube against the diamond, as he thrust the diamond into the red lasers. The red lasers wobbled, and then the air around the entire shop seemed to shimmer, the Daleks shaking where they stood.

"ALERT!" they cried. "ALERT!"

"Run!" the Doctor shouted, dropping the diamond and tugging Bender along with him.

Bender felt himself yanked out of the shop and around three corners, before they ducked into a back alley and stopped.

"What did you do?" Leela asked the Doctor.

"Another sonic trick," said the Doctor, with a grin.

"So, you're the weapon, right?" Bender asked. He grabbed the Doctor, testing his skin. "You seem pretty flabby to me, meatbag. How many girders c'you bend?"

"Rather a lot, given the right tools," the Doctor replied. "And would you stop… doing… whatever it is you're doing?"

"Bender, put him down!" Leela commanded. "He's an endangered and quite possibly extinct species of alien."

"Thing is—" started the Doctor.

"Yeah?" said Bender. "Well, I saw him first! And besides. He's not cute or cuddly, so what d'you care what happens to him?"

"I really think—" the Doctor tried again.

"He's plenty cute and cuddly," Leela insisted, trying to snag him away from Bender. "And I called dibs."

"I think you're forgetting—" the Doctor said.

"I was the one he made sing folk songs," said Bender, trying to snag the Doctor back towards him, "that makes him mine."

The Doctor gave a sharp whistle that pierced both their ears, and made them drop him onto the ground. The Doctor picked himself up, dusted himself off, and looked at them.

"Right," he said. "In case it has escaped your notice, we're in a highly dangerous situation, here, facing enemies whose name has become synonymous with death and destruction across the universe, with all your lives at stake. Seeing as I'm the only one who can stop the Daleks, I think it would be very wise to quit bickering over who owns me, and locate the last of you, so I can get you off this planet and save the universe. Anyone have a problem with that?"

Bender and Leela just glared at one another.

"Told you he was cute and cuddly," Leela muttered.

"I am _not_ — oh, never mind," said the Doctor.

"Okay, Jerkface," said Bender to the Doctor. "What's in it for us?"

"Sorry?" asked the Doctor.

"You heard me," said Bender. "What'll you give us if we let you save our lives?"

"You don't want me to save your lives?" asked the Doctor.

"Of course I do!" said Bender. "I'm just asking you what you're going to give me for the honor of saving the life of me. Bender."

The Doctor fiddled with the sonic. "Faulty ego-chip, maybe. Have you had your 30,000 light-year service, recently?"

Bender opened up his chest cavity. "You think you're so great with your fancy metal death tube?" he asked. He pulled out the doomsday device he'd stolen from the Professor earlier that week. "I've got a Deathinator 2300. What do you think about that?"

The Doctor sighed, and then buzzed the metal tube at the Deathinator. All lights on the doomsday device turned off, and the bomb sagged in Bender's hands.

"Right," said the Doctor, swiping the device away from Bender and stuffing it into his pocket. "Let me reiterate. The Daleks brought you three to this planet for a reason. Whatever that reason is, it'll be something far worse than death. I'm the only one here able to save your lives. In return, I'm hoping you will not do any of the various unpleasant things I've been hearing you discuss doing to me while I was on board your ship. Is that fair?"

"Maybe," Bender grumbled. "But only if you admit that I — Bender — am better and more supreme than any so-called Daleks."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Bender," he said. "Having never met you, and knowing nothing whatsoever about you, I can honestly and sincerely say that you are better than the Daleks."

"You better believe it, baby!" said Bender. He started dancing. "Everybody do the Bender!"

"Right," said the Doctor. "Now. Fry. Where would he be?"

"He said he was going to get me a ladder," said Leela.

The Doctor spun around. The street just ahead of them was filled with stores with names like, "Ladders-R-Us" and "Ladderway to Heaven" and "The Church of Ladder-day Paints!"

"Better start there, then," said the Doctor, starting off towards the street.

"Nah, he wouldn't be there," said Bender.

The Doctor paused, frowning.

"Yeah, he's probably somewhere not even close to there," Leela agreed. "Fry's a little… 'special'. You know." She tapped her head. "In the head."

The Doctor nodded, slowly. "I see." He ran a hand through his hair, then turned the other direction. "Right, then. Follow me, don't wander off, and if you see a Dalek, make sure it doesn't see you."

And then he walked off, at a brisk pace.

"Oh, yeah?" Bender shouted after the Doctor. "Well… well… I worked for the Robot Mafia, once!"

"Bender, what does that have to do with anything?" asked Leela.

"Nothin'," said Bender, strolling along after the Doctor. "Just wanted him to know how great I am."

"Look," said Leela, catching up to Bender, "I know this is a little weird, since we came here to capture him, but he has a really sexy pair of brainy-looking glasses, so let's just do what he says."

"Oh, I get it," said Bender, in a loud voice. "You wanna sleep with him!"

Leela's face went bright red. "Bender, shut up!"

The Doctor didn't turn around, or even acknowledge their conversation.

"What?" asked Bender, his voice just as loud as before. "That's what you squishy organic types do, right? Boy meets girl, you have sex, you have kids, Bender steals the kids and sells them on the black market, Bender goes out and gets himself a robot hooker. It's the circle of life!"

Leela glared at Bender. "You are not going to steal our 3 kids, who are going to be named Ashley, Trevor, and George!" Then she felt her face turn red, and she looked back at the Doctor, who was still not reacting to their rather loud conversation right behind him. "I mean… shut up, Bender."

"I'm just tellin' it like it is!" said Bender. Then he launched into a vibrant and very loud version of the song, "Bender is great!"

Leela shushed him, as the Doctor and the three of them quickened their pace and ducked down a number of abandoned streets.

"Bender! We're trying to hide from the Daleks!" Leela urged him.

"Oh," said Bender. "The Daleks. Right."

Then he launched into an even louder song:

"I'm walking down the street  
With Leela and some Jerkface made of meat,  
Looking for Fry! Looking for Fry!  
Fry wants a ladder;  
Jerkface is annoying but the Daleks are badder,  
Bender is great! Bender is great!"

The Doctor spun around. "Do any of you lot have any sense of self-preservation at all?" he demanded.

"Not really," said Bender, as he lit up a cigar.

The Doctor snatched the cigar out of Bender's hand, and stomped it out on the ground. "We're trying to hide!" he said, in a quiet but hard voice. "That means no shouting, no belting tunes about who you are and where you are and what you're up to, and no smoke signals!"

"If these Daleks are so smart, then why haven't they found us by now?" Leela demanded.

"DO NOT MOVE!" shouted a voice nearby. "DO NOT MOVE!"

The Doctor's shoulders slumped.

They looked around, and found themselves surrounded by at least ten Daleks, all pointing their metal gun sticks at them. The Doctor raised his hands in the air, and Leela and Bender did the same.

"YOU WILL SURRENDER!" shouted one of the Daleks. "OR THE FEMALE WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"

"Hey!" Leela protested.

"All right, all right," said the Doctor. "We surrender. Happy, now?"

"WE REQUIRE THE LOCATION OF THE HUMAN MALE KNOWN AS 'FRY'," shouted another Dalek.

A small smile crawled up the Doctor's face. "You mean you haven't found him, yet?"

"YOU SHALL OBEY!" shouted another Dalek. "OR THE HUMANOID FEMALE WILL BE—"

Leela launched out with her boot, trying to kick the Dalek back, but the Doctor grabbed her by the arm, and yanked her away from them.

"Bad idea," said the Doctor. "If you attack, they will kill you."

"You said they needed me," said Leela, tugging her arm away from him.

"THE HUMANOID FEMALE WILL ENSURE THE COOPERATION OF THE OTHERS," the Daleks reported.

"They need _you_ as a bargaining chip," the Doctor sighed. "It's Fry and Bender they're really after."

"SURRENDER!" the Daleks all shouted in unison. "SURRENDER! OR THE HUMANOID FEMALE WILL BE—"

"Why?" the Doctor cut in. "Why do you need some financially ruined delivery company, anyways? What could you possibly use them for?"

"THEY ARE NECESSARY," said one of the Daleks.

"What for?" asked the Doctor.

"Maybe they needed someone to bend girders," said Bender. He struck a pose. "Or show them how to be the greatest!"

"INCORRECT," said one of the Daleks. "DALEKS ARE ALREADY THE GREATEST. DALEKS ARE THE SUPREME BEINGS."

"Oh, yeah?" said Bender. "Well, you Daleks can bite my shiny metal ass!"

"THE DALEKS WILL EXTERMINATE YOUR SHINY METAL ASS," the Daleks informed him.

"No, no, no!" said the Doctor, rushing in between Bender and the Daleks. "No one is exterminating anyone else's shiny metal ass! Not while I'm here."

"THEN YOU WILL TELL US THE LOCATION OF THE HUMAN MALE," said the Daleks.

"We don't know where he is," said Leela. "We were out looking for him ourselves."

"THEN YOU ARE USELESS!" said the Daleks. "EXTERMIN—"

"Wait!" cried the Doctor, darting over to step between Leela and the Daleks. "She's his girlfriend!"

Leela opened her mouth to protest that things between her and Fry were way more complicated than that, and that she was actually quite open to the idea of another relationship, particularly ones with nearly-extinct species of pinstripe-clad humanoid life forms, but the Doctor gave her a warning look, and Leela clammed up.

"DALEKS HAVE NO NEED FOR—"

"Yes, you do!" said the Doctor. "Open a broadcast channel across the city, saying that you'll exterminate her unless Fry surrenders himself, and he'll come running."

The Daleks considered. "IT WILL BE DONE!"

"Yeah, well, if that's all, then we'll be off, now," said Bender. He gave a wave, and turned to leave. "See ya!"

The Daleks blocked his path. "YOU ARE A PRISONER OF THE DALEKS. YOU WILL COME WITH US."

"Yeah? Or what?" asked Bender. "Go ahead. Exterminate them! I don't care about these meatbags."

"Bender!" Leela scolded.

"OR YOUR BEER WILL BE EXTERMINATED," said the Daleks.

Bender hugged his chest cavity, protectively. "No! Not the beer!"

"Just… just… do what they say," the Doctor instructed Bender and Leela. "It's the best chance you have of getting out of this alive."

Leela followed the Doctor as he marched forwards with the Daleks, shoving his hands into his pockets. Bender trudged along behind, grumbling.

"So what's the real plan?" Leela whispered to the Doctor.

The Doctor turned to her with large, sad brown eyes. "There isn't one."


	6. Chapter 6

"You're not a ladder!" Fry said to the lizard he'd found by the creek. He brushed the lizard aside. "Go away! I'm looking for a ladder."

He ran across the creek, trying desperately to find a ladder. Except… he was a little bit confused about how he'd gotten here. Or how to find a ladder. Or what a ladder looked like. This was the year 3000. Maybe ladders looked different, now.

He ran back to the lizard.

"No, wait!" he said, picking it up by its tail. "Maybe you _are_ a ladder, and I just forgot!"

The lizard wriggled in his hands.

"Are you a ladder?" Fry asked it.

The lizard twisted around to face him, and in a musical, fluty voice said, "I am a magical lizard, imbued with the power to grant three wishes to any who catch me. If you wish—"

"You're not a ladder!" Fry said, flinging the lizard away. He sat on a rock, his head in his hands. "I'm never going to find a ladder to save Leela."

Just then, the sound of thousands upon thousands of loudspeakers crackling into life resounded across the creek. Fry looked up, as he heard the metallic voices chorusing through the air.

"THIS IS AN ALERT FOR THE HUMAN MALE KNOWN AS FRY," said the voice.

"Hey," said Fry. "That's me!"

"YOU WILL SURRENDER YOURSELF TO THE DALEKS, OR THE HUMANOID FEMALE LEELA WILL BE EXTERMINATED."

Fry scratched his head. There were a lot of big words in that sentence. Words he didn't understand. Surrender… that sounded bad. But then exterminate also sounded bad. And what were Daleks? And humanoids? And females — no, wait, he knew that one. He liked females. A lot.

Wait a minute.

"Leela!" said Fry.

And he ran back towards the sewers.

* * *

"So you're saying you led us down here with no plan, no way to escape, and no ability to fight back," said Bender. "You know, for a dangerous biological super-weapon, you're a real disappointment."

"I agree with Bender," said Leela. "We need a plan."

"SILENCE!" shouted the Daleks surrounding them.

The Doctor, hands still in pockets, just gave them a pointed look, and then gave a pointed look back at the Daleks.

"Maybe Bender could try to flirt with them," Leela suggested. "They might not be traditional-looking fembots, but they do have skirts."

"Hey, yeah!" said Bender.

"You can't flirt with them," said the Doctor. "They're _Daleks_."

"Stand aside and watch the master," said Bender. He brushed back his antenna, and strutted up to the nearest Dalek escorting them through the sewers. He cleared his throat. "Hey there, little Dalek. I just thought you had a really cute logic circuit, and you wouldn't mind me… checking it out."

"They're not robots," said the Doctor, taking one hand out of his pocket. "They're biomechanical monsters who feel nothing but hate and anger, and whose mission is to exterminate all other life in the universe that isn't Dalek."

Bender jumped back. "Biomechanical?" He gagged. "You wanted me to seduce a biomechanoid? That's just sick! I'm not that kind of robot!"

"SILENCE!" shouted the Daleks.

"Bender, they also want to destroy all life in the universe!" Leela whispered to him.

Bender shrugged. "Eh, we can all have dreams."

The Doctor looked between Bender and Leela, and Leela noticed that glint in his eyes that most superheroes got when they'd just worked out that someone they thought was a normal bending robot was actually an evil criminal mastermind.

"He doesn't mean it," Leela said. "He only says he wants to kill all humans when he wants attention."

Which, on second thought, probably wasn't the best thing to say to convince the Doctor that Bender was good. No, wait, not good. Just… harmless. Well, harmless enough.

The Doctor tore his eyes away from Bender, and fixed them back ahead of him, sticking his hands back into his pockets. "Still better than the Daleks," he decided.

Leela leaned in closer to him. "Now that we're in the sewer, couldn't you summon that sewer mutant like before?" she whispered.

The Doctor shrugged. "Can't," he said. "The Daleks won't fall for that one again. They'll know it's just an illusion, this time."

"What do you mean just an illusion?" asked Leela.

"Simple influx of harmonic frequencies bouncing off the phosphorescent illumination of the caves surrounded by a powerful magnetic shield and accompanied by three slightly broken holographic generators," the Doctor explained, illustrating the concept by waving his hands in the air, animatedly.

Leela looked at him, blankly. She was starting to understand how Fry felt. "Okay."

"Besides," said the Doctor, stuffing his hands back into his pockets, "I want to know what they're up to."

They walked a little longer, down the dimly lit sewer tunnels, Leela trying to block out the smell, but failing. Then, the Daleks stopped, turned, and placed their sink plungers against the wall. The wall whirred and groaned, and then slid away.

"All right," Bender cheered. "Secret clubhouse! If there's booze and hookers, I get first dibs!"

The Doctor looked like he wanted to hit his head on something. "There aren't booze or hookers. They're _Daleks_."

"Which means… whatever is in there is evil and deadly and probably going to destroy life in the universe?" Leela guessed.

"Yes," said the Doctor, looking a bit relieved that _someone_ , at least, had some sense around here.

"Well, I'm just sayin' is all," said Bender, as they all entered the secret passage.

They followed the Daleks through the room to an array of dimly lit machinery, all pulsing with a rhythmic, steady whining.

It looked, to Leela, like someone had taken an atomic clock, a ketchup dispenser, a suicide booth, and a hyperspacial warp-engine, scrambled them all together, and then rearranged them into something that looked more like a spider-web built by a drunk spider.

Wait a minute.

"That _is_ a suicide booth!" Leela shouted, pointing at the large blue wooden paneled booth in the middle of a cobbled-together cluster of machinery.

"Now I remember why I avoid the 31st century," the Doctor muttered.

"All right! A suicide booth!" said Bender. "Ooh, and English, too. That's classy." He stepped towards it. "See you later, losers!"

"HALT! HALT!" shouted the Daleks.

Bender collided with an invisible energy field, and was thrown backwards against the wall behind them.

The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, then turned to the Daleks. "Well, it's impressive, I'll grant you that. It'll never work, but very impressive, all the same."

"INCORRECT," said the Daleks. "THE REALITY ADJUSTOR WILL BE FULLY FUNCTIONAL."

"Reality Adjustor?" asked Leela.

"Ah, yes, this is a Reality Adjustor," the Doctor explained. "If it worked, it could rewrite the localized reality around us to make it conform to the Dalek's ideal. If it worked."

"But it doesn't?" said Leela.

"Nah. Never will," said the Doctor. "Not even I have enough temporal radiation to power this sort of thing, and I'm covered in the stuff. To make something like this functional, you'd need… well, first off, you'd need to use parts built from some machine that had gone back in time over and over again, then convinced all those copies of itself to stick around longer than they were technically supposed to, thus creating a massive paradox that cracked open the edges of our reality."

"Um…" said Leela, looking over at Bender.

"And, on top of that, you'd also need someone who had enough temporal radiation that he'd gone through the entire history of the universe at least three times," said the Doctor, "and was also his own grandfather."

Leela and Bender looked at one another.

"So basically," said Bender, "we're boned."

The Doctor looked at them. Then smacked his forehead with his hand. "You have to be the most temporally irresponsible independent delivery company I've ever seen!"

"Yep, that's us!" said Bender.

"Look, I know we've had a few temporal… problems in the past," Leela said, "but it's not our fault!"

"How isn't it your fault?" the Doctor demanded.

"I… haven't worked that out yet," Leela confessed. "But I'm sure it's definitely not our fault!"

The Doctor gave them a warning glare, then turned back to the Daleks. "So you're planning to rewrite this local area to be your perfect world," he said. "A little small scale for you, isn't it?"

"THIS IS NOT THE REALITY WE WISH TO ADJUST," said a red Dalek, who was working at a machine inside the energy barrier. "BEHOLD, DOCTOR. YOUR FINAL RESTING PLACE."

A section of the floor opened, and a mechanical contraption emerged which looked like it had been specifically designed to conform to the body of one man.

The Doctor.

It was riddled with restraints, with electrical probes and mind-digesters and all sorts of sensors and electrics that even Leela didn't recognize. As the device emerged fully, the blue suicide booth blinked its lights, and gave a soft groaning sound.

"So you're travelling through time," said the Doctor. "Worked that one out already, thanks. What for? What reality are you trying to adjust?"

"THE BEGINNING OF ALL REALITIES," said the red Dalek. "EVENT ONE."

The Doctor stared at the device, horrified. "You can't!" he shouted. "That's insane!"

"THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE WILL BE DALEK!" shouted the Daleks. "THE UNIVERSE WILL BECOME DALEK!"

"Event One," said Leela. "But that's—"

"The Big Bang," the Doctor agreed. "That's the reality they're rewriting. That's why they need me and my TARDIS. To ensure they get exactly the spot in space-time they're after."

"Eh, whatever," said Bender. "So you adjust reality, and then you let us go home, right?"

"INCORRECT," said the Daleks. "THE DOCTOR'S BRAIN MUST MAINTAIN THE STABILITY OF THE PARADIGM!"

"That sort of paradox, that sort of alteration, they'll have to keep the machine alive and working forever. A constant force keeping the paradox in check." The Doctor slumped. "They're not going to kill me. They're going to torture me. Forever."

"Yeah? So?" said Bender. "What about me? Bender?"

"THE ROBOT WILL BE DISASSEMBLED," shouted the Daleks.

"So?" said Bender. "I'll just download into a new body! Bender lives on!"

"I thought you couldn't do that," Leela whispered to him.

Bender sagged. "Oh, yeah."

"You couldn't return home even if you _were_ able to download into a new body," the Doctor told him. "If the Daleks succeed with their plans, the rest of the universe will cease to exist. At least, the way we know it."

"But you've got a plan to stop them, right?" Leela asked.

"No," said the Doctor. "I don't."

* * *

The Doctor paced their cell, hand running through his hair, making it go in every direction and making him look (Leela had to admit) far more cute and cuddly.

Leela tried kicking in the door, again, but, as happened the last fifty times she did it, the door wouldn't budge.

"Your turn, Bender," said Leela, giving up.

"What do I look like, a bulldozer?" asked Bender. "Ask Jerkface over here. He's got all the answers."

"Deadlock sealed," said the Doctor, not even pausing in his pacing.

"If the Daleks succeed, I know the universe is going to end, but what's going to happen to the four of us?" asked Leela.

"You'll be killed," said the Doctor. "Your friend, Fry, will have his brain overloaded within a matter of minutes and won't feel any pain after that point. As for Bender and myself…" The Doctor sighed. "We're not just steering the machine. We're stabilizing and securing the paradox." He dropped down onto the wooden bench on one side of the room. "We'll be around forever."

"All right!" Bender cheered.

"In constant pain and agony," said the Doctor.

"Oh," said Bender, his good cheer melting away.

"There's got to be something we can do," said Leela. "I'm not just giving up."

"There is one thing," said the Doctor. He took out his sonic screwdriver, and went over to Bender. "I'm sorry, Bender. I am so, so sorry."

"Yeah, well, I don't really care about…" Bender trailed off, as the Doctor activated the sonic, and Bender's eyes went into a spin of numbers and juddering motions, his mouth spewing incomprehensible amounts of data. Then, in a sudden whirr of mechanical circuitry, the light in Bender's eyes cut out, and he slumped over.

The Doctor sat back down on the bench, eyes fixed on the ground.

Leela just stared at Bender's now lifeless metal shell. "You didn't!"

"I did what I had to," said the Doctor. "At least this way, he wouldn't suffer."

Leela grabbed the guy by his pinstripe suit, and hoisted him up against the wall. "I was asking you to get us out of here!" she shouted. "Not to kill Bender!"

"It was the only thing I could think of," said the Doctor. "You'll cease to exist in a short while, anyways."

"That's not happening either," said Leela, letting go of him and striking out at the door again.

"You can't get out," said the Doctor, dropping back down onto the bench. "The Daleks are too powerful." He buried his face in his hands. "I told you to run. You should have done what I said!"

"Stop that!" said Leela. "There are still plenty of things we can do."

"There's nothing you or I can do," said the Doctor. "The moment Fry shows up, it's all out of our hands."

"Well, I'm not giving up!" said Leela. "I've got a whole life ahead of me. I'm not going to die just because I joined the crew of an irresponsible, financially struggling, suicidally dangerous independent delivery company."

The Doctor flicked his gaze over to the camera imbedded in the wall of their cell. "Anything you plan, they'll know," he told her. "Anything you come up with, they'll predict. The Daleks live and breathe logic and strategy. That's what they do. If you defy them, all you'll do is wind up getting killed." He slumped in his seat. "900 years, and the Daleks finally got me in the end."

Leela looked over at him. "We really are doomed, aren't we?"

"There's nothing you or I can do," the Doctor confirmed.

Leela thought a moment. Then she gave a small smile. Cute and cuddly. She thought she knew something they could do. "How long do we have until the Daleks come for us?"

"No idea," said the Doctor. "Ten, maybe fifteen minutes."

"That's long enough," said Leela, and she pounced on him.


	7. Chapter 7

Fry had noticed the bananas right away.

He didn't know why there were bananas in the sewer, but he knew they were _his_ bananas, and no monkey-wearing-a-hat was going to steal his bananas!

Except… wait, it hadn't been a monkey-wearing-a-hat, had it? It'd been some English guy.

But the important thing was that there were bananas, and bananas were bananas. Fry was pretty sure that was true. At least, he hoped it was true. If bananas _weren't_ bananas, he was in a bit of trouble.

The other problem involved where to put the bananas.

At first, Fry didn't know what to do. He put them in his pockets, but he didn't have enough pockets. And they weren't all stuck together in a bunch, anymore, the way they used to be. But then he noticed a great big cone thingy nearby and, hey, that could hold bananas!

So he grabbed the metal cone thingy, which was as tall as he was (and kind of hot, which was annoying, but it was also glowing enough that he could see his bones through his skin — which was cool!), and then started dumping all his bananas in there. It was annoyingly big, and didn't have wheels, which meant that Fry had to lug it to the next banana, then stand on his tip toes to get the banana in, then lug it on.

There were shouting voices. Shouting metallic voices. It seemed that there weren't just bananas down here. Unless bananas could talk on this planet. Maybe the bananas in the big metallic cone thing were trying to talk to him.

"Shh!" Fry said to the metal cone, as the metallic voices got louder. "I'm trying to rescue Leela!"

But the bananas wouldn't stop shouting. And they kept using that word that Fry heard from before — exterminate. Which sounded very, very bad. Maybe Fry should have a talk with these bananas.

That was when a metallic pepper-pot shaped object passed by an adjoining tunnel of the sewer.

Fry froze behind the cone thing with his bananas. The bananas kept talking, but for some reason the metal pepper-pots didn't notice his bananas. They also didn't notice him. Fry squinted at them past the side of the cone. Huh. They had little plungers on their bodies.

Oh. Okay. They were in the sewer, and had plungers. Cool. They were plumber robots.

Now that that mystery was solved, Fry went back to assembling his bananas.

He eventually arrived at a hidden stretch of wall panel that sizzled and opened when he dragged his metal cone against it. Okay. He could see some more bananas on the other side, so he figured he should probably keep going.

Did he have this many bananas when he arrived here?

He must have. That would make sense. He just miscounted the number of bananas he had, and now he was counting them right. Except… he wasn't counting them. But that was okay, too.

Fry kept on going, until he arrived at a much larger room with a lot of weird-looking machines in it. And the plumbers were here, too, which was okay. And his bananas were talking, again, which was less okay. But even less okay than that was what Fry saw on the floor, next.

It was Bender's accordion.

And then he looked over at what the plumbers were doing, and he could see, poking out from the web of machinery scattered across the room were Bender's legs, Bender's arms, and even Bender's antenna.

"No!" he shouted, the last banana still in hand, as he let the cone crash down onto the ground and ran towards the disassembled Bender. He picked up one of Bender's foot-cups off the floor. "How's Bender going to do the Mexican Hat Dance now?"

That was when Fry realized that the metallic voices weren't coming from the bananas. They were coming from the pepper-pot plumbers, who were all aiming their plungers at him, and they sounded pretty mad.

"ALERT!" they screamed. "ALERT! THE HUMAN MALE IS ARMED!"

Fry looked down to find that the last banana he'd picked up was not actually a banana. It was yellow, but it looked sort of more gunlike, and it sported the label "Property of Hubert Farnsworth" across the top. Fry aimed what he hoped was the deadly-end at the plumbers.

"Yeah, that's me!" said Fry. "Armed and dangerous! Now, give me back Bender and Leela, or I'll shoot!"

One of the plumbers' egg-whisk things twitched, and shot a bright light. The light engulfed the not-banana thing in Fry's hand, and the thing disintegrated.

Fry let out a little cry of alarm.

"ACTIVATE ENERGY FIELD!" shouted one of the plumbers.

Fry didn't have any idea what that was. But he knew that he used to have a banana that wasn't a banana, and he had a whole bunch more bananas that maybe weren't bananas, so he ran back and picked some up.

An array of red lights flickered into existence only seconds after Fry ran off.

Fry turned around, bananas in hand, and noticed that he was now separated from the plumbers by the array of red lights. Huh. That was weird. The plumbers were shouting something that sounded really confusing and complicated sounding, which Fry decided to ignore. In fact, there was only one thing that Fry could think to do in this situation.

He threw the bananas at the energy field.

The bananas bounced off the energy field, and surged back towards him. Fry shrieked, and ducked down with his hands over his head, as the bananas smooshed into the wall behind him.

Flying bananas. Plumbers screaming at him. And those red lights were bending more and more towards the tip of the cone he'd brought in, sparking and looking evil and menacing.

Fry turned, and ran.

He kept running, as fast as he could, before he realized he was running the wrong way. Instead of running out of this little secret hatchway place, he was running further into it. He was also starting to notice that he was really, really lost.

The place had all these little corners and bending parts and corridors, and the more Fry walked, the less he knew where he was. How was he supposed to rescue Bender and Leela now?

He heard the plumbers' voices up ahead. Wait, the plumbers were the ones that destroyed his little gun thing, right? So they were bad.

"THE HUMAN MALE HAS BEEN LOCATED," said one metallic voice.

"EXTERMINATE THE FEMALE!" shouted another.

Female. That was that word he liked! He liked females! Fry rushed out, trying to think of some way to stop these plumbers. Plumbers. What didn't plumbers like?

Oh, maybe plumbers didn't like red! Or was that bulls?

Fry took off his red jacket. Well, if they didn't like red, he'd show them. He could see one pepper-pot object approaching him down the corridor. Fry ran out and shoved his red jacket over the top of the plumber's domed robot head, jumping on its back.

"ALERT!" shouted the creature. "ALERT! MY VISION IS IMPAIRED! MY VISION IS IMPAIRED!"

"Take that, you stupid plumber!" shouted Fry, banging his fist on its head.

The plumber spun around, aiming randomly and cracking some of the walls around it as it shot its blue light. Cement began to tumble down around them, as there was a groan from the walls, floor, and ceiling. The cracks in the walls grew wider, as the ceiling sagged down lower, and Fry had to cling to the robot plumber to hold on.

"Fry?" came Leela's voice.

Fry looked up, and saw Leela emerging from the cracked wall to his right.

"Leela!" shouted Fry. "Boy am I glad to see you. I didn't find a ladder, but I found my bananas, and I found—"

Leela jumped to her feet, and kicked out at the pepper-pot plumber that Fry was clinging to. Fry cried out, as the pepper-pot rolled out from under his jacket, and he fell onto the floor, jacket drifting down beside him.

"Hey! That hurt!" said Fry.

Another tremble from the area surrounding them, and the groan of strained concrete. Leela grabbed Fry by the hand, and jerked him to his feet. The metallic pepper-pot flew into the air, eyestalk swiveling around to face them.

"EXTERMINATE!" it screamed.

"No, thank you!" shouted Leela, as she and Fry ran off, dodging an array of laser gunshots.

"No, wait!" said Fry, struggling against Leela. "My jacket!"

"You can get another jacket later, Fry," said Leela. "We're trying to avoid dying, here. And, if we're lucky, we'll save the universe, too."

"No," said Fry. "That jacket's one of the only things I still have from the 21st century. I'm not losing it!"

And Fry broke away from Leela, and raced back towards the collapsing section of the corridor and the shooting pepper-pot object floating in the sky.

"Fry, you idiot!" said Leela. "Come back here, and…" She trailed off, as she heard the steady thrum of Dalek machinery and the scream of Daleks rushing towards her from the direction she'd been running. She turned, and raced after Fry. "Wait up!"

Fry grabbed his jacket, and the pepper-pot swiveled its eye around to look at him. "HUMAN MALE DETECTED!"

"No, you don't!" shouted Fry, as he tossed the first thing he could get his hands on in his pocket — which he'd thought was a banana, but upon closer inspection, wasn't a banana — and threw it at the pepper-pot.

"But that's the Deathinator," said Leela, as she came up behind him. Closely following behind were the metallic shrieks of more pepper-pot objects, coming to cut off their escape. Leela's eye went wide, and she threw Fry to the floor just past the Dalek, as the Dalek exploded above them.

As the Deathinator went off, the entire tunnel shook around them, then collapsed. Leela and Fry scrambled to their feet, stumbling back away from the cave-in, shielding their eyes from the dust. When the dust settled, they discovered a wall of fallen cement and debris separating them from the rest of the pursuing pepper-pots.

"Wow, cool," said Fry.

Leela just gaped. "How…?" She glanced back at Fry, as the sounds of laser guns and explosions began to come through from the other side of the collapse. She grabbed Fry's hand. "That won't hold them off forever. Come on!"

She and Fry zigzagged across three corridors, before she dragged him into one of the ventilation ducts. They both took a moment to catch their breaths, before Leela turned to Fry.

"All right, Fry," said Leela. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," said Fry. "You're usually the one that knows stuff like that."

"I've been trying to escape from that cell for the last twenty minutes," said Leela. She paused. "The last five minutes," she corrected, glancing over at Fry, a slight flush coming to her cheeks, but she bit it down and then went on. "And every time that I tried to get out, the Daleks were two steps ahead of me. But you just marched right in and saved me with no trouble at all."

Fry picked his nose.

"And so far, everything you've done is stupid, idiotic, and ridiculous, but it's all been exactly right!" said Leela. "You jumped onto a dangerous alien, trying to get through what is — at the very least — a metal case made of bonded polycarbides using just your fists. Which somehow managed to get me out of that cell. Then you ran back just to pick up your coat, which caused us to avoid running into a whole bunch of Daleks coming the other way. And then you used a device that should have taken half this planet with us, but instead, it just blew up the Dalek and separated us from the other ones."

Fry scratched his head. "Is that good?"

"It's ingeniously stupid!" Leela insisted. "How could you possibly have known all that ahead of time?"

"I dunno," said Fry. "Maybe I'm actually really smart in secret, and never realized it!"

Leela gave a laugh.

Fry frowned, and huddled in on himself. "Well, the bananas probably think I am."

"Bananas?" asked Leela. She thought a moment, then reached into her pocket, and pulled out a small, metal tube with a blue light at the end. "Oh."

"Hey, cool!" said Fry, grabbing it out of her hands. He pressed down the button, and the blue light lit up the ventilation duct around them.

"Fry, stop it!" said Leela, trying to snatch it away. Then she paused. "Wait. Or maybe you're supposed to be doing this."

"Huh?" asked Fry. He was wooshing the tube thing around in his hand like it was a light saber, making cool sci-fi sound effects with his mouth and pretending he was a Jedi.

"Fry, I want you to tell me everything you've done since you went into the sewer," said Leela.

* * *

The account was very confused and hard to follow, but from what Leela could tell, this is what had happened:

Fry had gone down into the sewers, picking up a bunch of things that he assumed were bananas. Some of them were bananas — dropped by the Doctor, no doubt, while he, Bender, and Leela had been led to the Daleks' lair — but some were just random items the Doctor had in his pockets and dropped after he ran out of bananas, like the Deathinator (had the Doctor reprogrammed it, or had he just missed something when he deactivated it?) and some other weird things. The last few items were clearly things that used to be in Bender's chest cavity, before Bender had been disassembled.

Fry had then picked up a radioactive warp-cone drive, which, aside from being completely dangerous to humans, also had the distinction of being very bad for nearby electronics, and, when it brushed against the drinky bird toy still in Fry's pocket (which had, apparently, not been made of plastic after all) the two had reacted, making the cone mostly stable and non-toxic. Except in very close range of electronics and around long-range life-sign sensors (which was so bizarre and random that it seemed completely nonsensical). When the Daleks' machinery had attempted to detect Fry, their sensors must have been scrambled by the cone, which caused them not to notice him.

The cone had then fried the door panel, letting Fry into the building. But Fry, seeing Bender's disassembled body, had blown his cover by shouting at the Daleks. The Daleks tried to trap him using a cage comprised of anti-neutrino field isolators (just as they'd done with Bender), but Fry's cone had delayed the signal long enough for Fry to get out of the way before he was caged in. Not understanding what was going on, Fry had simply decided to throw bananas at the Daleks. The bananas, of course, had bounced off the energy field around the machine.

And once he got that drinky bird close enough to the warp-cone drive, the anti-neutrino field was altered, and began to fluctuate and falter. If Fry had stuck around, he probably could have used this to his advantage (unless the Daleks had already thought of that, which, from what Leela could make out, they had been). Except instead of doing something smart, Fry had freaked out and run away.

Which led to him trying to fight off a Dalek with his fists, using a doomsday device to cause a cave-in, and saving her life.

Which was crazy!

Fry had been completely stupid, bordering on suicidal, and yet he'd inadvertently managed to do everything right. While Leela had been smart, and wound up doing everything exactly wrong.

She'd been trying to escape ever since the Daleks had marched the Doctor out at gunpoint. She'd tried to ambush the Daleks at the door. She'd tried forcing the lock. She'd tried sneaking out through the ventilation ducts. She'd even tried clobbering them across the head. And she'd quickly discovered that what the Doctor had warned her about was true. The Daleks had seen every single plot that she'd been hatching, had safeguarded against every single strategy she could use. There was nothing they hadn't foreseen.

So how had Fry managed to completely escape the Daleks?

"The bananas are from the Doctor," said Leela. "But how could he have known that you'd pick up something as dangerous as that radioactive warp-drive cone? Or that you were going to do all those other idiotic things that you did?"

"I dunno," said Fry. He'd gone back to wooshing the sonic screwdriver around like a light saber again.

Leela frowned. _There's nothing you or I can do_ , the Doctor had told her. _The moment Fry shows up, it's all out of our hands._ Had he been giving her a message? Something that he hadn't wanted the Daleks to pick up on?

_The Daleks live and breathe logic and strategy._

Fry yelped, as the sonic screwdriver accidentally collided with one of the wires, and sparks shot out across the ventilation duct. Leela grabbed the screwdriver out of his hands, and shushed him.

Logic and strategy.

This _hadn't_ been planned, Leela realized. The Doctor had led Fry to the correct point, had provided Leela with the sonic screwdriver, but other than that… there hadn't been a plan. The Doctor hadn't been predicting Fry's actions.

The Daleks had. That was why Fry was evading them.

Because the Doctor had realized what Leela hadn't. That the Daleks were all logic and strategy. While Fry was completely without either. Anything that Fry did, no matter how stupid or insane, would be the right thing to do, because it would be exactly what the Daleks weren't expecting.

Including, Leela suspected, whatever Fry had just done with the screwdriver.

"Okay," said Leela. "Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to go up to the Nimbus and try to get them to send for backup. In the meantime, you're going to stay here, and save the universe."

Fry blinked at her, blankly, for a second. Then he just shrugged. "Okay."


	8. Chapter 8

As soon as Leela had made it through the ventilation ducts and out of the sewers, Fry stepped out into the corridor, ready to save the universe.

He found himself face-to-face with about a dozen metal pepper-pots, all pointing egg-whisks (no, wait, Leela had said that they were super-deadly guns or something, right?) at him.

"HALT!" they shouted. "HALT! YOU ARE A PRISONER OF THE DALEKS! YOU WILL COME WITH US!"

Fry blinked at them. "Daleks? I thought you guys were robot plumbers."

"WE ARE THE DALEKS! WE ARE THE SUPREME BEINGS!" shouted the Daleks.

"Oh," said Fry. He waved at them. "I'm Fry. I'm not supreme to anything."

"THAT IS CORRECT," said one of the Daleks.

Fry scratched his head. "So… you're not plumbers?"

"WE ARE DALEKS!" shouted the Daleks, in unison. "WE ARE THE SUPREME BEINGS."

"It's just… you've got plungers," said Fry.

"SILENCE!" shouted the Daleks. "SILENCE!"

"THE MANIPULATOR ARM IS VASTLY SUPERIOR TO HUMANOID HANDS," one of the Daleks informed Fry.

"Oh," said Fry. He glanced down at his hand, flexing his fingers. "Yeah. I could see that."

He was then poked and prodded down the corridor, stepping across the now cleared-away debris from the caved-in part of the tunnel, and back towards the main area. As Fry entered the larger room, he noticed that the red laser grid was gone, and so was his banana-holding cone. Sort of. It looked like someone had sliced up the cone into a million pieces, each section sparking and sizzling over by the wall. Fry looked around for Bender, but it seemed that Bender's body had been fully incorporated into the machine.

Wait. There was someone else in the machine, now, too.

Fry blinked, and squinted. It looked like a man wearing a brown pinstripe suit, who'd been strapped to a large slab of machinery, his head and upper body surrounded by complex circuitry and metal bands. Some of the machinery, Fry realized, looked like it had come from Bender — Bender's arm was connected to a wire that looked like it had been forced into the guy's skull.

Then Fry looked a little closer at the guy. And realized he'd seen this guy before.

"Hey, I know you!" said Fry, racing up to him. "You're that English guy! That wasn't a monkey-wearing-a-hat!"

"Well, actually, not really English," said the man. "Not really from Earth. I'm the Doctor. Pleased to meet you, again!"

"SILENCE!" shouted the Daleks.

A group of Daleks advanced towards Fry. "YOU WILL STAND BY THE REMOTE SYNAPTICAL MANIPULATION HATCH," they commanded, their plungers gesturing towards another part of the machine, where a second group of Daleks were stationed.

"Or what?" asked the Doctor. "You'll exterminate him? You need him alive just as much as you need me alive. You won't exterminate either of us."

"Yeah!" said Fry, still not really sure what was going on.

The Daleks' egg-whisk guns twitched, angrily. "YOU WILL OBEY! YOU WILL OBEY!"

"You're about to control the entire universe, sentencing your number one enemy to a fate of eternal torment," said the Doctor. "You could at least allow me to have a conversation before I die!"

The Daleks shook with rage, but swiveled around, and glided across the room, towards the array of monitors and control devices that all seemed to be showing really complicated stuff that Fry didn't know about.

"Well," said the Doctor, his eyes still fixed on the Daleks. "That bought us some time. At least until they can find something or someone else to threaten with extermination if we don't cooperate." He looked down at Fry, with sad eyes. "I'm sorry about this."

"It's okay," said Fry, with a shrug. "I've had a good life." He frowned. "No, wait. I haven't! This blows!"

The Doctor sighed. "Isn't exactly the way I wanted to go out, either. Ending the universe and all."

"Oh, don't worry," said Fry. "Leela says I'm going to save the universe."

The Doctor gave a small grin. "And how are you planning to do that?"

Fry shrugged. "I dunno. Stop asking me such hard questions!"

"Good man," said the Doctor.

"No, wait!" said Fry. "I know how to save the universe. I'll get you out, and then _you_ can save the universe while I just sit back and hog all the credit!"

Fry reached out, and felt a jolt of electricity sear through him as his hand made contact with the restraints. He tugged back his hand. "Ow!"

"Sorry, my fault," said the Doctor. "Tried to make you use logic. Reasoning."

"Oh," said Fry. "I'm not very good at those."

"Exactly my point," said the Doctor. He glanced over at the Daleks, still shouting orders at one another over to the side. "This device is supposed to rewrite reality, you know."

"Really?" said Fry. "Cool!"

"Well, not so much cool, exactly," said the Doctor. "What with the Daleks being completely evil."

But Fry was still stuck on the 'altering reality' part.

"So, if I wanted… an ice cream," said Fry. "No, wait! A really big robot ice cream. With diamonds as eyes and purple claws that do that thing from Star Trek! Then it would just appear?"

The Doctor considered. "Well…"

A shout interrupted their conversation. A shout that Fry recognized. It was Leela's voice.

"Leela!" Fry cried, as she was marched into view, surrounded by Daleks.

"YOU WILL STAND BY THE REMOTE SYNAPTICAL MANIPULATION HATCH," the Daleks commanded Fry. "OR THE HUMANOID FEMALE WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"

"You're going to kill me anyways," Leela muttered. "Just get it over with already."

The Daleks all twitched their egg-whisk guns, eagerly. "EXTERMIN—"

"No, wait!" said Fry. "Don't kill her! I'll do… whatever you just said."

"Fry, if you do what they say, I'll die anyways!" said Leela. "I'll just take the rest of the universe with me!"

Fry hesitated. He looked at Leela, then at the place where the Daleks were indicating he was supposed to stand, then at Leela. Sweet, beautiful Leela.

All eyes in the room were fixed on Fry.

Fry slumped his shoulders, and trudged over to the whatever thingy that the Daleks were surrounding. The place they obviously wanted him to be.

"Fry!" Leela shouted at him.

"I'm sorry," said Fry, not looking back at her. "I just don't think there's a universe worth living in without you."

Leela's single eye welled up with tears. "Aw…"

Fry turned around, standing in the spot the Daleks wanted him, and the restraints and machinery folded around him, collapsing across arms, legs, chest, and head. And he knew that the last thing he'd see in his life was Leela looking at him.

At least he could have that.

* * *

Leela stood, looking on as the machinery folded around Fry, as the Daleks began shrieking orders and the Reality Adjuster hummed into life. It then seemed to ramp up, the circuitry sparking with blue energy, and it looked like all that energy was flowing through the blue suicide booth in the middle and then through the Doctor.

He cried out in pain, as the machinery gave a higher and higher pitched mechanical whirr. The air seemed to bend and wobble around them, Leela's every breath becoming visible and coursing with a multicolored ambiance. The voices of the Daleks around them seemed to swallow one another in their cacophony, and Fry's hair started standing straight up, as the energy finally blasted through him and he screamed.

"INCREASE LIMITATION VARIABLE PARAMETERS!" shouted one of the Daleks.

"LIMITATION VARIABLE PARAMETERS INCREASED!" another Dalek replied.

The Daleks no longer seemed to care about Leela anymore. They were all focused on the machinery. This was her big chance! She tried to lunge out, but she found herself thrown back by a red-laser energy field, once more. The only thing she'd seen get through that had been the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. She took out the screwdriver, and tried buzzing it against the red lasers, but they didn't yield. She wished she had better knowledge of sonic technology, but her Sonics class had been the one where she'd been seated right next to Adlai Atkins, and she'd spent all her time fantasizing about him.

Stupid Adlai Atkins.

The suicide booth began howling, as its light flickered at the top, and the chorus of screams from the people hooked up to the machinery intensified. At some point, Leela knew, the universe would be recreated and she would cease to exist. She wasn't sure when that would be, but it had to be soon, right?

"REARRANGE EINSTEINIAN PARADIGM!" shouted a Dalek.

"EINSTEINIAN PARADIGM REARRANGED!" another Dalek confirmed.

Leela thought she could feel the room expanding and contracting around her, the machinery shifting from gray to blue to green to red, and she realized she had no idea if she'd just said, "weird," or if she was about to say it, or if it had never really happened at all.

A surge of energy poured into the Doctor, and with a final scream of pain, he slumped in his bonds, completely passed out.

"ALERT!" shouted one of the Daleks. "ALERT! FLUX READINGS INDICATE ALTERNATE PRESENCE NEARBY!"

"REALITY ALTERNATORS NOT FUNCTIONING ACCORDING TO PARAMETERS!" shouted another Dalek.

"TIME CORRIDOR FAILING TO INITIALIZE!" shouted a third.

"DOCTOR BRAINWAVE PATTERNS DECREASING!" shouted a fourth.

Then a laugh spread through the air. A chuckle that was almost villainy in tone, and yet so welcomingly familiar to Leela that she nearly cheered in relief.

It was Bender.

"And so reality was given to me, Bender," said Bender's voice, resounding throughout the room. "And I made all worship Bender, and praise Bender, and give Bender beer, and tell Bender he was the greatest. And it was good!"

"Bender, you're alive!" said Leela.

"Of course I'm alive!" boomed Bender's voice from the Reality Adjustor. "I'm the supreme ruler of everything. Now, quiet, while I set forth my decree!" Bender cleared his throat. "From this day forth, this land will be filled with robot hookers, and lots of sexy robot wenches, and all sorts of elicit dealings. Oh, and everyone has to give me five hundred bucks."

The landscape began to shift around Leela, the walls disappearing, fading away into a blur of color and motion.

"But I thought the Doctor killed you!" said Leela.

"You think some little metal blue-glowing-light thingamajig could get rid of me?" asked Bender. "Contrary to popular belief, I am so awesome that my awesomeness can survive even the mightiest of blasts, the most thunderous of firestorms, the most powerful—"

"You don't know what happened, do you?" said Leela.

"Of course I know what happened!" Bender snapped. "I downloaded into a new body! This machine!"

"But… you can't do that!" said Leela. "You don't have a backup device." She glanced down at the screwdriver in her hands, and suddenly, it all made sense. "The Doctor downloaded you."

He must have known that the Daleks would destroy Bender's mechanical sentience. He then lied to them, pretended he was performing a mercy-killing, and actually downloaded Bender into the screwdriver. Fry would, naturally, try to use the screwdriver as a light saber or flashlight or something it wasn't, and chances were, he'd inadvertently wind up beaming Bender's consciousness into some power source hooked up to the Dalek's machine.

"Can you get Fry and the Doctor out?" Leela asked Bender.

Leela looked at the machinery, and could see the severed body parts of Bender twitch, fruitlessly, then give up. So… it looked like Bender really _couldn't_ download into a new body. Just the same body. Bender could control his own mechanical circuits, but not the rest of it.

Which meant he couldn't release Fry and the Doctor.

"Course I can!" Bender lied. "I just don't want to! What do I care about these meatbags? I'm God almighty, and all will bend to my will!"

"You said the last time you played God, everyone wound up dying in a nuclear holocaust," Leela pointed out.

"Yeah, but what're you gonna do?" said Bender.

Leela looked around, as the landscape nearby resolved itself into something concrete, something she could see as shapes and figures. She braced herself for Bender's perfect world, whatever that would be, and watched as the shapes solidified into…

Grass. And people. Men, women, and children, all running barefoot across the green grass, laughing and shouting and being happy, sunlight streaming across their shoulders and sparkling across every strand of their hair. And every single one of those people looked like her — with a single large eye, and purple hair.

"Hey, wait a minute!" snapped Bender. "This isn't my reality!"

"Hi, Leela," came a voice from her left.

Leela turned to see Fry walking forwards, offering her a hand. She took it, and he pulled her out from the red-laser cage she was kept in. Which, technically speaking, shouldn't have been remotely possible.

"Fry," said Leela. She glanced back at the inert figure of Fry, still screaming and writhing in pain in the machine. "I thought you were in there."

"Yeah, I know," said Fry. "And that was cool and stuff, but then I thought, I know, why don't I be out here, too? And then I was."

Leela looked around. "This is your reality," she realized. "Your perfect world."

It was sort of stalkery and a little creepy, but also really, really sweet.

"I didn't want you to be alone anymore," Fry explained. "So I thought, a thousand Leelas. No, wait! A million Leelas!"

The number of Leelas around them began increasing as Fry spoke.

"REALITY HAS BEEN CORRUPTED!" shouted a Dalek.

"EXTERMINATE THE ERRONEOUS LIFE FORMS!" shouted another.

The Daleks all swiveled around, their eye stalks turned towards the planet of Leelas.

Leela looked away. She didn't want to see what was going to happen, next.

"Don't worry," said Fry. "They're all Leela. And if there's one thing I know about Leela, it's that Leela can get rid of anything."

The Leela look-alikes all turned around to face the Daleks, their single large eyes all glaring daggers at the bio-mechanical monsters.

"Hiii-ya!" they all shouted in unison, as they rushed the Daleks in a swarm.

"EXTERMINATE!" shouted the Daleks.

But no matter how many of the Leelas the Daleks shot down, there were always more, rushing forwards and attacking. And these Leelas were really strong. Strong enough to bash the Daleks' heads in. Coming to their aid were dinosaurs wearing jet-packs, ice cream cones with diamond eyes and purple claws, and — inexplicably — Gunther, the monkey-wearing-a-hat that they'd delivered to Mars 12 years ago. The Daleks cried out, as they were destroyed, crushed under the weight of Fry's completely non-sensical imagination.

"Fry, you traitor!" snapped Bender. "This was supposed to be _my_ world! What did'ya do?"

"I dunno," said Fry, with a shrug. "I guess I saved the universe or something."

"No, _I_ saved the universe!" said Bender. "That weapon-endangered-guy told me so. In his head. He told me that if I adjusted a few tiny little things, I could rule reality, and everyone could tell me just how great I am."

"Oh," said Fry. "I guess his plan didn't work."

Leela looked around at the reality nearby, then back at the machine. At the limp, unresponsive pinstripe figure, lying in his restraints. The person who'd been able to look her straight in the eye and tell her that the universe was going to be destroyed and everyone was going to die, even when he hadn't meant it. The one who'd claimed he had no plan at all, while he was dropping a trail for Fry to follow.

The one who'd asked Bender to modify the machine, to give Bender control of all reality. But the Doctor understood enough to know that Bender shouldn't get his hands on reality. And to know that there was only one mind between the four of them that the Daleks couldn't predict, couldn't grasp.

"I think the Doctor's plan worked exactly the way it was supposed to," Leela told them.

Fry scratched his head, looking at the machine. "Why's that one guy all pale and asleep and stuff?"

"Because he's dying, meatbag," Bender said. "Duuuuh."

"Oh," said Fry.

"He said that you were supposed to be brain-dead within a few minutes," Leela explained to Fry. "And he was supposed to be in control of sending this thing through time. Since we didn't move through time, I think… he made it so that the pilot would control the entire machine. Then switched your places, so you'd be the one in control of reality, and he'd be the one who died."

"Oh," said Fry. He scratched his head again.

"Aw, man," said Bender. "He's going to die? That blows! I'd just worked out what he was, too! A Time Lord. Do you know how much you can get for a Time Lord on the black market? The number one bidder is some outfit calling themselves 'the Daleks'. Kind of fruity-sounding name, but…"

"Bender," Leela scolded.

"Oh," said Bender, remembering the situation they were all in at the moment. "Right." Then Bender gave a cough, and a grumble. "Well, screw that Jerkface! Like I wanted to pawn some meatbag pacifist anyways! Just you watch! I'm going to hijack reality from Fry, and use it to create a huge mutant army of…"

The voice cut out, as the bits of Bender from all over the machine flew together, and Bender emerged in front of them, back in his normal body.

"Hey, all right! I got my arms and legs back!" He started doing the Mexican Hat Dance, singing, "I bend! I bend! I bend! Around the universe! I bend! I bend! I bend! Because Bender is great!"

Leela went up to the monitors that the Daleks had once been monitoring. She watched as the brainwave scan of the Doctor's mind dipped lower, and lower. Around them, the whirr of machinery died away, the Leelas began to fade, and the Fry that was walking around turned transparent, like a ghost.

Leela watched as the monitor showed the Doctor dying. She'd just met him, sure, but… she couldn't help but feel a little sad about the fact that he'd given up his life for them.

Especially since they'd been kind of mean to him this whole time.

"Well, that was fun," said Bender, walking over to them. "I got my body back, Fry's nearly done messing around with reality, and then I can go home and get me some robot hookers!"

Leela and Fry ignored him. Fry put a transparent hand on Leela's shoulder.

"Why're you sad, Leela?" asked Fry. "Can I make it better?"

Leela turned, and looked into Fry's hopeful eyes. He was so stupid, so mind-bogglingly, idiotically simple, but he still loved her enough that he'd do anything for her. Anything at all.

"Can you bring him back?" Leela asked.

Fry gazed into her eye, his form growing more and more transparent every second, as the Doctor's brain function dropped closer and closer to zero.

"Okay," said Fry, at last.

And then Fry popped out of existence, the machine crumbled into dust around them, and the blue energy that had coursed through its mechanical circuitry all amassed together, zooming straight for the unconscious pinstripe-clad body laying on the floor. As it flowed inside of him, the Doctor gave a sudden gasp, and his eyes opened.

From the other side of the room, Fry gave an "oomph" as he hit the floor. He rubbed his head.

"My thinking thing hurts," he complained.

Leela looked between the Doctor, struggling to his hands and knees, and Fry, looking completely confused and in need of someone who had far more mental faculties than he had. The Doctor could work things out for himself.

Leela ran over to Fry.

"Did I do good stuff?" asked Fry.

"Yeah," said Leela. "You did good stuff."

Then she threw her arms around him, and gave him a big kiss in return.

Which lasted right until they heard the ring of pipe hitting skull, and Bender's chuckle.

Leela and Fry turned around, to find Bender over the now-once-more unconscious Doctor, a lead pipe in his hands.

"What?" said Bender. "I wasn't going to sell him. I was just going to steal his stuff."

"Bender," sighed Leela.

Bender made a pfffft sound. "He's _your_ pet. I'm just mugging him."

"He is _not_ my pet!" Leela insisted. "He's just the alien I'm planning to somehow get to move into my apartment and share a bed with me." She looked over at Fry, and faltered. "In a not-even-remotely-sexual way."

"Sounds like a pet to me," muttered Bender, taking out the Idiot's Guide to Offloading Stolen Endangered Livestock from his chest cavity, again.

"Does that mean Bender's going to flush the Doctor down the toilet the way he did with Nibbler?" asked Fry.

"Probably," Bender agreed.

"No one is flushing anyone else down the toilet!" shouted Leela, snatching the book out of Bender's hands and throwing it away. "Or selling the Doctor off like he was some animal. We need to get the Doctor to the Nimbus so Zapp Brannigan doesn't hang us as traitors, remember, Bender?"

"Oh, yeah," said Bender.

"I get it!" said Fry. "We turn the Doctor over to Zapp, then ditch him and go home and watch TV."

"No!" said Leela. "We prove to Zapp that he's harmless, and then bring him somewhere safe where he won't get swept up by poachers or stolen by robots with a shady sense of morality." She gave Bender a pointed glare.

"Oh, all right," Bender grumbled. "I promise I won't ever touch your new pet—"

"Or flush him down the toilet," put in Fry.

"Or flush him down the toilet," added Bender, "if you let me keep this suicide booth."

He walked over to the blue wooden suicide booth that still lay in the center of the room.

Leela frowned. "What do you want a suicide booth for?"

"Stuff," said Bender, reaching over and picking it up. "Things. Mind your own business!"


	9. Chapter 9

And so, with the suicide booth loaded up into the Planet Express ship, and the Doctor firmly secured to a chair with a bunch of rope, the crew of Planet Express lifted off the Planet Doom, and were immediately pulled towards the Nimbus with a tractor beam.

"Well, if it isn't the fair Captain Leela, come begging for more," said Zapp Brannigan, over the video phone.

Leela shuddered, bracing herself for yet another terrible encounter with this always irritating man.

"We've got the weapon," said Leela. "Except it isn't a weapon. I mean he isn't a weapon. He's just a cute, cuddly endangered species of alien. Who's harmless. And you should let go."

"Cute, cuddly, and harmless," said Zapp. "The deadliest kind of creature."

"He just saved all our lives," Leela pointed out. "And the universe."

"Sir," came Kif in the background, "we've gotten another call from Earth President—"

"Delay that call!" said Zapp. "I have a cute, cuddly, and harmless enemy to dispatch." He took out his gun. "Maximum kill."

"Sir," said Kif, with a weary sigh, "that's a zit gun."

"The deadliest kind of zit gun," Zapp corrected.

Then the image blinked off, and, from the chair behind them, the Doctor groaned back to consciousness. He took a look around them, then at the ropes encircling him, and dropped his head back in annoyance.

"Of course," he muttered.

"Quit your yammering!" said Bender, flipping through a 'microcircuits-revealed!' edition of Playbot Magazine.

"So what's it to be, then?" the Doctor asked them. "Sold on the black market? Caged up in a zoo? Sealed in a nature preserve?"

"No, we're just going to hand you over to some military powerhouse that thinks of you as a weapon and not a person," said Fry.

"Right," said the Doctor. "Yes. I see. And I suppose that there'd be no chance appealing to your better nature? Seeing as I've just saved your lives and the entire universe?"

"Nah," said Bender, turning another page.

Fry scratched his head. "I know what nature is," he said. "But how do you get a better nature?"

"We're not handing anyone over to anything," Leela told the rest of her crew, pointedly. "The Doctor isn't our prisoner. We're just going to prove to Zapp that he isn't a threat and we aren't traitors, and then we can get him somewhere safe where he can lead a normal life and not get sold off like some kind of not-cute, not-cuddly creature."

"I see," said the Doctor. "Not your prisoner. Right. And the ropes are just… what, exactly?"

"Oh, those are just so Bender doesn't steal you," said Fry. "Or mug you. Or take naked photos of you. Or—"

"Fry, he gets the point," said Leela.

"If you untied me," said the Doctor, "I could help you escape this tractor beam, and then you could drop me off on the Planet Doom, while you head back to Earth."

"The Planet Doom? No way!" said Fry. "It's scary there! And there could be more evil robot plumbers."

"Besides which, _you_ barely escaped from that planet with your life!" Leela told the Doctor. "We're not taking you back."

"You don't understand," said the Doctor. "I left my…" He trailed off, realizing that it was probably better if he didn't tell this temporally irresponsible delivery company that he had a super-duper time machine somewhere nearby. "…something very important there. Something I need. I have to go back for it."

"I'm the captain, and you'll do what I say!" shouted Leela. "Now. Here's the plan. I'll talk to Zapp, and work out some arrangement so he'll let you go. Then we take you back to Earth, where you'll be safe. You look human enough that you'll blend right in, and you can live a normal life with the rest of us."

"Hey, yeah!" said Fry. "You could work for Planet Express, and mooch off the Professor just like us!"

The Doctor nodded over at Bender. "Thought he wanted to sell me on the black market."

"Nah, I'm good," said Bender.

"We worked out a deal," Leela explained. "Bender's not going to sell you, anymore. Which means that all we really need to do to get you off the hook is convince the Earth military to release you into my custody. As the most responsible, smart, and law-abiding Earthican working for Planet Express."

The Doctor swallowed, nervously. He glanced over at Fry, who was obviously in love with Leela, hoping he'd intervene, but Fry looked completely oblivious to the implications of this particular arrangement.

"Listen," said the Doctor. "It's not that you're not a terribly lovely woman, because you are. It's just, well, see, it's quite important that you lot leave me on the Planet Doom. Terribly important."

"Oh, no," said Leela. "You saved our lives. We're not letting you get killed by Daleks or kidnapped by poachers. You're coming home with us. That's final."

"And then we're never going anywhere near this galaxy ever again," said Fry.

"You want me to stay on Earth," said the Doctor. "As Leela's prisoner."

"Nah," said Bender. "Way I understand it, you're more like her pet."

"Bender!" snapped Leela.

The Doctor slumped in his bonds. "Brilliant," he said. "I save your lives and the lives of everyone in the universe, and this is my reward."

"Yeah, it's a sucky life, but what're you gonna do?" said Bender.

"You're not going to be a pet, or a prisoner!" said Leela. "You're just going to stay with me and Nibbler. In my apartment. Sharing a bed."

"Under constant supervision," said the Doctor. "With you as my jailer."

"No," protested Leela. She hesitated. "I mean, maybe a little. Officially. But… staying with me isn't so bad. And if you get lonely, there's always someone you can turn to for a little company."

The Doctor gave a sigh, and stared dejectedly at the floor. He looked the very picture of misery and devastation.

"Aw, it's okay," said Fry, patting his arm reassuringly. "I'm sure you'll fit in just fine back on Earth. And if you don't, you can always use that blue wooden suicide booth down in the cargo bay."

The Doctor's eyes perked up at this. "That what?"

"Fry!" shouted Leela.

"Yes!" cried the Doctor. "Yes, that's exactly what I want to do! I am so completely and utterly depressed, I can't go on living, and I want to commit suicide in the suicide booth in your cargo bay!"

Leela shot the Doctor a hurt look.

"Oh, no you don't!" Bender cut in. "That suicide booth is mine. You keep your grubby hands off!"

"It's what?" asked the Doctor.

"Oh, yeah, it's Bender's," Fry agreed. "Leela gave it to him so he wouldn't try to sell you or flush you down the toilet or anything."

"You're a robot with an ego larger than half the universe!" said the Doctor. "What do you want a suicide booth for?"

"None of your business!" snapped Bender. "I think it's classy. Keep your hands off my stuff!"

"Technically speaking," said the Doctor, "it's _my_ stuff. You just knocked me over the back of the head and stole it from me."

"Either I get the suicide booth, Jerkface, or you get sold to top bidder number two," said Bender. "Which are…" He checked his mechanical databases. "…the Cybermen. Ooh, sounds like trouble!"

"Right," said the Doctor, with a shrug. "Fine. Bender's suicide booth. Perfectly reasonable, and you're welcome to have it after I'm gone, just… quick nip inside, let me kill myself, and you lot can do whatever you want with the suicide booth once I'm done."

"No deal," said Bender.

Leela stared at the Doctor, a tear forming in her single eye. "You'd rather kill yourself than live with me?"

The Doctor faltered. "Well, no, not exactly," he said. "I… see, thing is, I'm a seriously depressed individual, with no home planet, no friends, and no family. And I'd very, very much like to commit suicide. Regardless of any terribly nice and attractive individuals who have—"

"I thought I was your friend," Leela said. "And I don't have a family, either."

"You are my friend!" said the Doctor. "It's just… listen, Leela, you're very nice, and I understand that you're trying to do the best for me, but I really, really want to commit suicide in that particular suicide booth. So, if you'd be so kind as to let me—"

"Hold it right there," said the voice of Zapp Brannigan, as he stepped onto the bridge of the Planet Express ship. He looked around, his eyes narrowing on the Doctor, as he pointed his gun at the bound and helpless man. "By the power the Earth government has invested in me, the famous Captain Zapp Brannigan, you're hereby under arrest for being an incredibly dangerous harmless thing."

Kif gave a weary sigh.

"I see," said the Doctor, his eyes fixed on the gun. "So you're one of that sort." He frowned. "Sorry, is that a zit gun?"

"A deadly zit gun," said Zapp Brannigan.

"I told you," said Leela. "He's not a weapon. The Earth government got it wrong. He's just some cute, cuddly endangered alien who wouldn't harm a fly."

"Wouldn't harm a fly?" said Zapp. "I think not. I think he'd harm a hundred flies!" He narrowed his eyes at the Doctor. "What were you doing on the Planet Doom?"

"Saving the universe," Leela said.

"Yeah!" said Fry. "And then we saw these really evil plumbers, and they were like, pow, pow, and we were like, aaaaaa! But then he killed them and saved all our lives."

"So," said Zapp Brannigan to the Doctor, "you're a murderer of plumbers, are you?"

"They weren't plumbers," said Leela. "They were evil bio-mechanical—"

"Yes!" the Doctor cut in. "I am an evil, murdering super-weapon, and if you don't detain me, immediately, I will see to it, personally, that every single one of you are dead!"

"Aha!" said Zapp. "I knew it. No one is that cute without being deadly."

"Oh, yes," the Doctor agreed. "Terribly brilliant of you to see through my dastardly — wait a tic. Did you just call me cute?"

"You nearly had me," said Zapp, "until you accidentally let slip the one thing I needed to assert your guilt. A full confession from you."

"Zapp Brannigan," said Leela, jumping to her feet, "if you release this endangered alien into my custody, I promise to take care of him, feed him, walk him, and make sure that he doesn't destroy the world."

"Nice try," said Zapp, "but for all your sensual captaining skills, you don't have the ability to contain someone as dangerously harmless as this."

"I'll stay near him every single second of the day!" Leela promised. "Come on! Just let him go."

Zapp sidled over to Leela. "And what would you do to help me reconsider?"

Leela tried to muffle her disgust as he approached her. She glanced at the Doctor, and realized she was going to have to do something absolutely miserable if she wanted to save the life of the guy who'd just saved the universe and all their lives. She smothered every impulse she had to punch Zapp in the face, and gave him a smile, instead.

"Oi!" the Doctor shouted at Brannigan.

Zapp Brannigan spun around, snapping his eyes over to the Doctor, with a menacing glare. "Do you mind? I'm trying to score, here!"

"Suppose that means you don't want to hear all my evil plans, then," said the Doctor.

Zapp looked from Leela to the Doctor, trying to figure out whether this was worth interrupting his shameless and obviously undesired courtship. Finally, he seemed to decide, and reached out to grab for Leela.

"Which is good, really," the Doctor added, quickly. "Because I'm planning to completely destroy your world, and no one but the famous Captain Zapp Brannigan would be able to stop me!"

"Oh, all right," said Zapp, dropping Leela and striding back over to the restrained Doctor, pointing his gun at the alien. "What are these… evil plans of yours?"

"I'm telepathic," the Doctor explained. "Go on, check! Bender knows my species. I've been brainwashing every single crew member on board this ship, so that they'll bring a very dangerous blue box to Earth for me. A blue box that contains something so powerful that the Earth military would love to get their hands on it."

"The suicide booth?" cried Leela.

"It's not a suicide booth," the Doctor told Zapp. "It's disguised as a suicide booth. It's actually a space ship and a time machine of unspeakable power. With it, I'll be able to seize your world and destroy it." The Doctor gave a laugh that was clearly trying to sound evil and villainous, although only succeeded in sounding mildly annoyed. He coughed. "Sorry, that laugh didn't work quite right. Could I try it again?"

"Hands off the suicide booth!" said Bender. "It's mine!"

Zapp seemed to hesitate.

"As I said," the Doctor reiterated. "Unspeakably powerful. Definitely something the Earth Military would want to get their hands on."

Zapp made up his mind, and turned to his men. "Get it."

"Oh, no!" said Bender. "Either I get the suicide booth, or I pawn Leela's new pet. Or possibly their kids. Or their stuff. That was the deal."

Everyone ignored Bender.

Fry scratched his head. "That blue thing is your spaceship?" he asked the Doctor.

"Yep," said the Doctor, with a proud smile. "Time, space, and the universe, all mine with the touch of a finger."

"You fly around the universe in a suicide booth?" asked Leela. "And I thought _my_ life was depressing!"

"Wait a minute," said Fry, an indignant look washing across his face. "If it's not a suicide booth, then why did you want to commit suicide in it?"

"Aha!" said Zapp. "Check and mate!"

Leela and Kif both gave the same weary sigh.

"The only conclusion to draw is that it really _is_ a suicide booth," said Zapp. "Some sort of super suicide booth that travels across time and space."

"I called dibs on the suicide booth," Bender snapped. "You get your hands off my stuff!"

"Under article 982 of the Earth Government's Laws that We Never Look at but Passed During a Really Drunk, Rowdy Night in the Capital Building, any time-travelling suicide booths are the property of the Earth Government," said Zapp Brannigan. "The suicide booth will be taken into my custody, along with the Weapon, and the entire crew of Planet Express."

"Sir," said Kif, "I'd like to remind you that Earth President—"

"Wait, you can't arrest us!" said Leela. "We're innocent!"

"Yeah," said Bender, taking a puff on an illegal cigar he'd stolen from the Cuba-Planet.

"I thought he said the drinky bird brainwashed us with flying bananas," said Fry, pointing at the Doctor.

"Enough of your mindless protests!" shouted Zapp Brannigan. "Kif! I want the suicide booth secured and brought on board the Nimbus, along with this…" He gestured his gun at the Doctor, "…weapon." He leaned down to Kif, and whispered, "but be careful. I've heard its deadly power lies in its cuteness."

"In what way am I cute?" the Doctor protested. "Really! I'm hardly cute! I'm the Oncoming Storm, the Ka-Faraq-Gatri, the—"

"Shut up, freckle-face," snapped Bender. His mood had just plunged down a hundred points as the cafeteria crew of the Nimbus arrived carrying his blue suicide booth.

"Wait, but if you're taking the Doctor and the suicide booth, does that mean Leela doesn't have to sleep with you anymore?" Fry asked Zapp.

Zapp Brannigan turned to Leela, eyebrows raising. "I don't know. Does it?"

"Oi!" the Doctor interrupted. "If you don't mind, I'd like to get back to the Nimbus so you can foil all my evil plans, please! And… you'll have to guard me yourself. Very carefully. With no opportunities to do anything to any one-eyed captains who happen to be on board your ship."

Zapp glared at the Doctor. "Kif," said Zapp, "slap that adorably cute face of his."

Kif gave the Doctor a slap across the face.

"I am not adorably cute!" the Doctor protested. "In what way am I adorably cute?"

"In the same way you're harmlessly dangerous," said Zapp, poking his zit gun into the Doctor's side. "Mr. Evil Weapon." He nodded at Kif. "Take him to the Nimbus."


	10. Chapter 10

The Doctor's blue suicide booth had been placed on the bridge of the Nimbus, but the Doctor had been secured far enough in front of it that he couldn't access it. The Planet Express crew had all been secured on the other side of the bridge.

"So," said Zapp Brannigan, pacing in front of the Doctor. "You say that you have a suicide booth capable of travelling through time. Convenient for those rare times when you want to kill yourself in a bygone era." He stopped and turned around to glare at the Doctor. "Or kill your enemies."

"Sorry, what was the question?" asked the Doctor.

"The question is, where have you hidden the gold?" Zapp demanded.

"What gold?" asked Leela. "What are you talking about? Do you even have a reason for arresting us?"

"Gold! Yes! That would be inside the suicide booth," said the Doctor. "I'll just pop in and get it. Two tics, that's all I need."

"No!" shouted Zapp Brannigan. He gave the Doctor a suspicious glare. "I don't trust you."

"Yes, yes, you really shouldn't," the Doctor agreed. "What with my being evil and all. Tell you what? Why don't you have your men secure these three innocent civilians somewhere on this ship that certainly couldn't be unlocked using setting 47B on the sonic screwdriver, while you stay here and interrogate me?"

"And let them miss the moment you concede defeat at the hands of your enemies?" said Zapp. "I think not."

"Oh, well, if that's all you're looking for," said the Doctor, "then fine. I concede defeat. You, Zapp Brannigan, have bested me in a game of wits. Now, lock these three up somewhere else, so you can maintain your vigilant and heroic efforts to keep Earth safe by interrogating and watching me very closely."

Zapp examined the Doctor carefully. "Believe it or not," he said, "I'm beginning to think you might have some ulterior motive."

"Certainly not!" the Doctor insisted.

"Sir," said Kif to Zapp. "Earth President—"

"Not now, Kif!" said Zapp. "I'm busy." He turned, and walked towards the Planet Express crew. "Did this dangerous weapon really want you to take him to Earth?"

"Well, no," said Fry. "He wanted us to take him to… oomph!"

This last part was said in response to Leela side-butting him into Bender.

"Talk," said Zap Brannigan, grabbing a weapon from the nearest crew member, "or I'll bludgeon you to death with this…" He examined the weapon in his hand. "…spatula."

Fry gulped. "Planet Doom."

"Just as I thought!" said Zapp, turning back to pace the bridge between the Doctor and the Planet Express crew. "You were planning to go back to the Planet Doom and gather up every degenerate you could find, so that you could eliminate plumbers once and for all, thereby forcing us all to go with stopped up toilets and plugged up sinks." He pounded his fist into his gloved hand. "And so, you destroy the Earth."

"Sir," said Kif, with a weary sigh, "that makes no sense."

"I say it makes perfect sense!" said Zapp. "And what's more, I will make sure that the plan never succeeds." He turned to Kif. "Prepare the missiles for a planetary attack. I want anyone still alive on the Planet Doom disintegrated immediately."

Kif gave a weary sigh.

"No!" said the Doctor. "The Daleks only destroyed one city. Everyone else on that planet is innocent!"

"A likely story," scoffed Zapp. Then he noticed that Kif was just standing around. "Kif, why haven't you gone to fire the weapons?"

"Because there aren't any working weapons systems on this ship anymore," said Kif.

"Then fix them!" shouted Zapp Brannigan.

"All right! I surrender!" said the Doctor. "Take me, take my TARDIS, take anything. Just leave that planet alone."

Zapp looked over at Leela, shooting her the kind of facial expression that he believed to be manly and irresistible, although it made Leela gag. "You see what kind of hero this weapon of yours really is?" said Zapp. "He may seem dangerous and adorable, but on the inside, he's just a sniveling coward."

"Sir," said Kif. "Don't you think you should check in with Earth President—"

"This is war!" shouted Zapp Brannigan. "We don't need to check in with anyone."

"Technically, only the President is allowed to declare war," Kif informed him.

Zapp paused. "Really?"

"Yes," said Kif, with a weary sigh.

Zapp waved a gloved hand at Kif. "Fine. Put him through."

The screen flickered into life, and the image of a head in a jar appeared on the screen on the bridge of the Nimbus. A head with thick, bushy eyebrows, a receding hairline of deep brown hair, and angry, belligerent eyes.

"Barrruuuuh!" said the head of Richard Nixon. "Zapp Brannigan. You were ordered to locate item 33971 and return it to the planet Earth. What's taking you so long?"

"Mr. President," said Zapp, saluting. "We have recovered the weapon, and were just interrogating him, sir! I believe he's an evil enemy of Earth, trying to conquer the world by using his suicide-booth-time-machine to rid the world of plumbers."

"Time machine, you say?" said Richard Nixon. He peered at the blue suicide booth, and his eyes widened in recognition. His eyes flicked back to the secured Doctor. "Doctor? Is that you?"

The Doctor seemed surprised, for a moment, then hid it beneath a friendly smile. "Yes! That's right! Just little old me, wandering about."

"Well, I never!" said Richard Nixon. "I haven't seen you since that incident with that little girl a thousand years ago! It's been so long, I barely recognized you."

"Ah, well," said the Doctor, "understandable. What with faces… not being exactly the way you remember them… and whatnot."

"Oh, yes," said Nixon. "And I remember your two companions. Baruuuh! What were their names? Mr. and Mrs.—"

"Better let the past stay in the past!" the Doctor cut in. "Long time ago and all that. No need to tell… too many details. Now, if we could talk about my current situation…" The Doctor looked down at the ropes around him, and gave a sheepish grin.

"Brannigan, release him," Nixon ordered. "This man is a great hero of our country and hero of our planet. And, on a personal note, a very good friend of mine."

The Doctor just stared at the screen, his smile clearly trying to hide the severely unnerved look flooding across his face.

"But sir," said Brannigan, "this creature has confessed to being an evil enemy who wants to destroy our world! You can't just let him—"

"You will stand down, Brannigan!" said Nixon. "Unless you want to go on my enemies list."

Zapp Brannigan saluted. "No, sir!"

The Nimbus crew shuffled over and started untying the Doctor.

"Ah, and Mr. President, if you'd be so kind," said the Doctor, nodding towards the Planet Express crew, "my… latest companions, over there, seem to have gotten into a wee bit of trouble as well. Don't suppose you could see your way to getting them out of it?"

"Oh, all right," said Nixon. "But only because you've finally seen sense and abandoned that ridiculous bow tie of yours."

The Doctor's face went momentarily a little paler, before he recovered himself. "Yes, right! Of course. Thank you."

"If that's all, Brannigan," said Nixon, "I have work to do. Take care of yourself, Doctor."

And the screen flicked off.

"All right!" said Fry, as the Nimbus crew released him and the others. "We're free!"

The Doctor just stared, in horror, at the spot where Richard Nixon's head had once been.

"What's wrong?" asked Leela, taking a step towards the Doctor.

"I've just had a terrible premonition," said the Doctor, "that at some point in my own future, I'm going to think bow ties are cool."

Fry shuddered at the thought.

The Doctor composed himself, and plastered a smile on his face. "Right, well, if we're all done with that," he said, "I think I'd better… get back to killing myself. In my… suicide booth."

He fished a key out of his pocket, and put it into the lock.

"No!" shouted Leela, running towards him. "Wait! Don't go!"

"Yeah!" said Fry. "You don't have to kill yourself just because you're going to think bow ties are cool!"

The Doctor just winked at them, then rushed inside his suicide booth before Leela could reach him. The door clicked shut, and Leela ran into it.

"Come back!" Leela called.

The booth gave a wheezing, groaning sound, as the light on the top flashed, and it disappeared before their eyes.

Leela stepped away from the now empty spot, a sad, lonely look on her face.

"Oh," said Fry. He looked over at Bender. "Sorry, Bender. I guess you're not getting your suicide booth after all."

"Eh, whatever," said Bender, as he danced the Mexican Hat Dance back to the Planet Express Ship.

* * *

Aboard the Planet Express ship, Leela bent her head over the control lever of the ship, trying not to cry. She'd been prepared to give up her freedom, her romantic prospects, and even her own dignity for that man, and he'd just waltzed off into the universe in his time-space-ship-disguised-as-a-suicide-booth, without even saying goodbye.

Maybe it was her. Maybe no man would ever love her.

"You okay?" asked Fry.

Leela looked up at him. Fry. Poor, stupid, ridiculous, irresponsible Fry. Who'd rather sit at home and watch TV than go out and fight against the most evil things in the universe. Who wasn't some cute and cuddly alien who was actually a heroic ancient being with a super secret time machine. Who barely understood enough to string words together into a sentence.

But _he_ loved her.

"Yeah," said Leela. "I am." She pulled herself together, and then started up the Planet Express ship. "Come on. Let's go home."

"Home?" said Bender. "No way!"

Fry and Leela looked over at Bender.

"I just got a presidential pardon," said Bender. "I'm going out to commit some felonies!"

Fry and Leela looked at one another.

"Well, I guess if we've got the pardon, we might as well use it," said Leela.

"All right!" said Bender. "Let's go rent ourselves a pimpmobile and steal a star system!"

* * *

"And so the Planet Express Ship zoomed off into the stars," said Nibbler, narrating the story as the Planet Express ship faded into the starry depths of outer space, "ready to go on a Bender-style crime-o-thon the likes of which the universe would not soon forget. For you see, in the universe, there are many different kinds of…"

The sound of the TARDIS materializing echoed from nearby, followed by an English voice, shouting, "Oi! Mr. Have-Fun-Fighting-The-Daleks-By-Yourself-At-Arcadia! I want a word with you!"

"In conclusion," said Nibbler, as he jumped into his spaceship, "be safe, don't do drugs, and always have a ready escape route!" Then the space ship top closed, and he zipped off to follow the Planet Express ship.

The Doctor ran out, and, seeing Nibbler's departing ship, shouted after him, "It's only fifteen dollars!"

* * *

The End


End file.
